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NIGHTS IN LONDON 



NIGHTS IN LONDON 



THOMAS BURKE 

AUTHOR OF " LIMF.HOUSE NIGHTS : QUEER TALES OF CHINATOWN" 



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NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1916 






Printed in Great Britain 






(All rights reserved) 



CITY DUSK 

The day dies in a wrath of cloud, 
Flecking her roofs with pallid rain, 

And dies its music, harsh and loud, 

Struck from the tiresome strings of fain. 

Her highways leap to festal bloom, 
And swallow-swift the traffic skims 

O'er sudden shoals of light and gloom, 
Made lovelier where the distance dims. 

Robed by her tiring-maid, the dusk, 
The town lies in a silvered bower, 

As, from a miserable husk, 

The lily robes herself with flower. 

And all her tangled streets are gay, 
And all her rudenesses are gone; 

For, howso pitiless the day, 

The evening brings delight alone. 



TO 

MOTHER 

WHO STILL ENJOYS A NIGHT IN TOWN 



CONTENTS 



Nocturnal . . . .• . .11 

An Entertainment Night (Round the Halls) . 33 

A Chinese Night (Limehouse) . . -73 

A Domestic Night (Kensington and Clapham Com- 
mon) ...... 95 

A Lonely Night (Kingsland Road) . . 113 

A Musical Night (The Opera, the Promenades) . 129 

A Jewish Night (Whitechapel) . . . 149 

A Miserable Night (Lisson Street) . . 161 

A Happy Night (Surbiton and Battersea) . . 177 

A Worker's Night (The Isle of Dogs) . . 199 

A Charitable Night (East, West, North, South) . 229 

A French Night (Old Compton Street) . -251 

A Scandinavian Night (Shadwell) . . . 265 

An Italian Night (Clerkenwell) . . . 281 

9 



IO 



CONTENTS 



A Basher's Night (Hoxton) 

A Hard Labour Night (Fleet Street) 

A Russian Night (Stepney) . 

A Down-Stream Night (Blackwall) 

An Art Night (Chelsea) 

A Sunday Night (Anywhere) 

At Random .... 



PAGE 
297 

3 2 9 

349 
361 

375 
389 



NOCTURNAL 



EVENING 

From The Circus to The Square 
There's an avenue of light; 

Golden lamps are everywhere 

From The Circus to The Square; 

And the rose-winged hours there 
Pass like lovely birds in flight. 

From The Circus to The Square 
There's an avenue of light. 

London yields herself to men 
With the dying of the day. 

Let the twilight come, and then 

London yields herself to men. 

Lords of wealth or slaves of pen, 
We, her lovers, all will say : 

London yields herself to men 
With the dying of the day. 



NIGHTS IN TOWN 



NOCTURNAL 

For the few who have an eye for the beauty 
of townscapes, London by night is the loveliest 
thing in the world. Mantled always in her 
sombre mists and empanoplied by rude spears 
of brick, she sprawls her fierce carcass across 
the miles, superb as a wild animal. Nowhere 
else may the connoisseur find so much to 
enchant him. Only in the London night may 
he find so many vistas of sudden beauty, be- 
cause London was never made : she has 
" growed." Paris affords no townscapes : 
everything there is too perfectly arranged ; its 
artificiality is at once apparent. In London 
alone he finds those fantastic groupings, those 
monstrous masses of light and shade and sub- 
stance, handled with the diabolical cunning of 
Chance, the supreme artist. 

Take London from whatever point you will 
and she will satisfy. For the rustic the fields 
of corn, the craggy mountain, the blossomy 
lane, or the rush of dark water through the 
greenwood. But for your good Cockney the 
shoals of gloom, the dusky tracery of chimney- 
stack and gaswork, the torn waste of tiles, and 



14 NOCTURNAL 

the subtle tones of dawn and dark in lurking 
court and alley. Was there ever a lovelier 
piece of colour than Cannon Street Station at 
night ? Entering by train, you see it as a huge 
vault of lilac shadow, pierced by innumerable 
pallid arclights. The turreted roof flings itself 
against the sky, a mountain of glass and inter- 
lacing girders, and about it play a hundred 
indefinite and ever-changing tones. Each plat- 
form seems a lane through a dim forest, where 
the trees are of iron and steel and the leaves are 
sullen windows. Or where shall you find a 
sweeter pastoral than that vast field of lights 
that thrills the midnight sojourner in lower 
Piccadilly? Or where a more rapturous river- 
piece than that to be glimpsed from Hunger- 
ford footbridge as the Embankment lights and 
stones surge east and west toward Blackfriars 
and Chelsea? Or where a panorama like those 
that sweep before you from Highgate Archway 
or the Islington Angel ? 

But your good Cockney finds his joy not 
merely in the opulent masses of gloom and 
glare. For him London holds infinite delica- 
cies. There is a short street in Walworth Road 
—East Street — which is as perfect as any night - 
scape ever conceived by any artist. At day or 
dark it is incomparably subtle. By day it is 
a lane of crazy meat and vegetable stalls and 
tumbling houses, whose colours chime softly 
with their background. By night it is a dainty 
riot of flame and tousled stone, the gentle dusk 
of the near distance deepening imperceptibly 
to purple, and finally to haunting chaos. And 



NOCTURNAL 15 

—it is a beautiful thought — there are thousands 
and thousands of streets in London where 
similar ecstasy awaits the evening wanderer. 
There is Edgware Road, with its clamorous 
by-streets, alluring at all times, but strangely 
so at twilight. To dash down the great road 
on a motor-'bus is to take a joy-ride through 
a fairyland of common things newly revealed, 
and to look back from Dollis Hill is to look 
back, not on Kilburn or Paddington or 
Marylebone, but on the Field of the Cloth of 
Gold. 

Moreover, London wears always new 
beauties for the faithful— new aspects, sudden 
revelations. What was beautiful yesterday is 
gone, and a new splendour is presented. 
Building operations are begun here, house- 
breaking is in progress there, the gaunt 
scaffolding making its own beauty against the 
night sky. Always, throughout the seasons, 
her townscapes are there to cheer, to entrance, 
to satisfy. At dawn or noon or dusk she stands 
superb ; but perhaps most superb when the 
day is done, and her lights, the amazing whites 
and yellows and golds, blossom on every hand 
in their tangled garden, and her lovers cluster 
thick and thicker to worship at her shrine and 
spend a night in town. 



Nights in town ! If you are a good Cockney 
that phrase will sting your blood and set your 
heart racing back to— well, to those nights in 
town, gay or sad, glorious or desperate, but 



16 NOCTURNAL 

ever sweet to linger upon. There have been 
nights, have there not, nights when we . . . 
you remember . . . ? There is no night in all 
the world so rich in delicate delights as the 
London night. You cannot have a bad night 
in London unless you are a bad Cockney — or a 
tourist ; for the difference between the London 
night and the continental night is just the 
difference between making a cult of pleasure 
and a passion of it. The Paris night, the 
Berlin night, the Viennese night — how dreary 
and clangy and obvious ! But the London 
night is spontaneous, always expressive of your 
mood. Your gaieties, your little escapades are 
never ready-made here. You must go out for 
them and stumble upon them, wondrously, in 
dark places, being sure that whatever you may 
want London will give you. She asks nothing ; 
she gives everything. You need bring nothing 
but love and a clean smile. Only to very few 
of us is she the stony-hearted stepmother. We, 
who are all her lovers, active or passive, know 
that she loves each one of us. The passive 
lover loves her as he loves his mother, not 
knowing his love, not knowing if she be beauti- 
ful, not caring, but knowing that she is there, 
has always been there, to listen, to help, to 
solace. But the others, who love her con- 
sciously, love her as mistress or wife. For 
them she is more perfect than perfection, 
adorable in every mood, season, or attire . They 
love her in velvet, they love her in silk ; she 
is marvellous in broadcloth, shoddy, or cor- 
duroy. But, like a woman, her deepest beauty 



NOCTURNAL 17 

she holds for the soft hours when the brute 
day is ended and all mankind sighs for rest and 
warmth. Then she is her very self. Beauty 
she has by day, but it is the cold, incomplete 
beauty of a woman before she has given her- 
self. With the lyric evening she surrenders 
all the wealth and wonder of her person to 
her lover : beauty in full flower . 

As a born Londoner, I cannot remember a 
time when London was not part of me and I 
part of London. Things that happen to 
London happen to me. Changes in London 
are changes in me, and changes in my affairs 
and circumstances have again and again 
changed the entire face of London. What- 
ever the mood or the occasion, London is 
behind it. I can never say that I am happy 
or downcast. London and I are happy, 
London and I are having a good time, or are 
lost in the deeps. Always she has fallen to 
my mood, caught the temper of the hour ; 
always is waiting, the fond mother or the 
gracious mistress, with stretched hand, to 
succour and sympathize in sorrow, to rejoice 
in good fortune. 

And always it is London by lamplight which 
I vision when I think of her, for it was the 
London of lamplight that first called to me, as 
a child. She hardly exists for me in any other 
mood or dress. It was London by night that 
awoke me to a sense of that terrible spirit 
which we call Beauty, to be possessed by which 
is as unsettling and as sweetly frightful as 
to be possessed by Love. London, of course, 

2 



18 NOCTURNAL 

is always calling us, if we have ears to hear, 
sometimes in a soft, caressing voice, as diffi- 
cult to hear as the fairies' song, sometimes in 
a deep, impelling chant. Open your window 
when you will in the gloating evening, whether 
you live in town, in the near suburbs, or in the 
far suburbs — open your window and listen. You 
will hear London singing to you ; and if you 
are one of her chosen you will have no sleep 
that night until you have answered her. There 
is nothing for it but to slip out and be abroad 
in the grey, furtive streets, or in the streets 
loud with lamps and loafers, and jostle the 
gay men and girls, or mingle with the chaste 
silences. 

It is the Call not only of London, but of 
Beauty, of Life. Beauty calls in many voices ; 
but to me and to six million others she calls 
in the voice of Cockaigne, and it shall go hard 
with any man who hears the Call and does 
not answer. To every man, young or old, 
comes, once in his life, this Call of Beauty. 
At that moment he awakens to a realization of 
better things than himself and his foolish little 
life. To that vague abstraction which we call 
the average man it comes mostly with first 
love or religion, sometimes with last love. But 
come it does to each one of us, and it behoves 
us all to hearken. So many of us hear, and let 
it pass. The gleam pauses in our path for an 
instant, but we turn our backs and plod the 
road of materialism, and we fade and grow old 
and die without ever having lived. Only in 
the pursuit of beauty is youth retained ; and 



NOCTURNAL 19 

beauty is no respecter of person, place, or 
time. Everywhere it manifests itself. 

In the young man of the leisured classes 
this sense only awakens late in life. He is 
educated to consider only himself, to regard 
himself as, in the Broadway phrase, a serious 
proposition ; and some time must pass before 
he discovers, with a pained surprise, that there 
are other people in the world, and that his little 
life matters not at all in the eternal scheme. 
Then, one day, something happens. He falls 
in love, perhaps ; and under the shock of the 
blow he discovers that he wants something- 
something he has not known before, some- 
thing he cannot name : God, Beauty, Prayer, 
call it what you will. He discovers a thousand 
subtle essences of life which his clumsy taste 
had hitherto passed. He discovers that there 
is a life of ideas, that principles and ideals are 
something more than mere fooling for dry- 
minded people, that thoughts are as important 
as things. In a word, he has heard the Call 
of Beauty. Just as a man may live in the same 
house with a girl for years, and then one day 
will discover that she is beautiful, that she is 
adorable, that he cannot lose her from his life, 
so we live surrounded by unregarded beauty, 
until we awake. So for seven years I was 
surrounded by the glory of London before I 
knew that I loved her. . . . 

When I was a small child I was as other 
children of our set . I played their games in 
the street. I talked their language. I shared 



20 NOCTURNAL 

their ambitions . I worshipped their gods . Life 
was a business of Board School, breakfast, 
dinner, tea, struggled for and eaten casually, 
either at the table or at the door or other con- 
venient spot. I should grow up. I should 
be, I hoped, a City clerk. I should wear 
stand-up collars. I might have a moustache. 
For Sunday I might have a frock-coat and 
silk hat, and, if I were very clever and got 
on well, a white waistcoat. I should have a 
house— six rooms and a garden, and I might 
be able to go to West End theatres sometimes, 
and sit in the pit instead of the gallery. And 
some day I might even ride in a hansom -cab, 
though I should have to succeed wonderfully 
to do that. I hoped I should succeed wonder- 
fully, because then the other boys at the Board 
School would look up to me. 

Thus I lived for ten years, and then the 
call came. Life was then the squalid thing 
I have sketched. A primrose by the river's 
brim was no more to me than to Peter Bell, 
or, since I had never seen a primrose growing, 
shall I say that the fried-fish shop at the corner 
of the High Street was but a fried-fish shop, 
visited once a week, rapturously. But after 
the awakening, everything was changed. 
Things assumed a hitherto hidden significance. 
Beauty broke her blossoms everywhere about 
the grey streets and the sordid interiors that 
were my environment. 

And my moment was given to me by 
London. The call came to me in a dirty street 
at night. The street was short and narrow, 



NOCTURNAL 21 

its ugliness softened here and there by the 
liquid lights of shops, the most beautiful of 
all standing at the corner. This was the fried- 
fish shop. It was a great night, because I was 
celebrating my seventh birthday, and I was 
proud and everything seemed to be sharing in 
my pride. Then, as I strutted, an organ, lost 
in strange lands about five streets away, broke 
into music. I had heard organs many times, 
and I loved them. But I had never heard an 
organ play " Suwanee River," in the dusk of 
an October night, with a fried-fish shop minis- 
tering to my nose and flinging clouds of golden 
glory about me, and myself seven years old. 
Momentarily, it struck me silly— so silly that 
some big boy pointed a derisive finger. It 
somehow ... I don't know. . . . It . . . 

Well, as the organ choked and gurgled 
through the outrageous sentimentality of that 
song, I awoke. Something had happened to 
me. Through the silver evening' a host of little 
dreams and desires came tripping down the 
street, beckoning and bobbing in rhythm to 
the old tune ; and as the last of the luscious 
phrases trickled over the roofs I found myself 
half-laughing, half -crying, thrilled and tickled 
as never before. It made me want to die for 
some one. I think it was for London I wanted 
to die, or for the fried-fish shop and the stout 
lady and gentleman who kept it. I had never 
noticed that street before, except to remark 
that it wasn't half low and common. But now 
it had suffered a change. I could no longer 
sniff at it. I would as soon have said some- 



22 NOCTURNAL 

thing disrespectful about Hymns Ancient and 
Modern. 

I walked home by myself, and everything 
answered this wonderful new mood. I knew 
that life was rapture, and, as I looked back 
at the fried-fish shop, swimming out of the 
drab murk, it seemed to me that there could 
never be anything of such sheer lyrical loveli- 
ness outside heaven. I could have screamed 
for joy of it. I said softly to myself that it was 
Lovely, Lovely, Lovely ; and I danced home, 
and I danced to bed, and my heart so danced 
that it was many hours before I slept. 

Thereafter nothing was the same. The 
change made the grown-ups about me wonder. 
I heard them discussing me. And at last, 
apparently by way of disposing of the matter, 
they assumed that I had Got A Girl, and I was 
dubbed The Quiet One. But I had found 
Something. London had presented herself to 
me as the Lady Beauty, and I held the secret 
flower that neither time nor tears can fade. 

From that day London has been my 
mistress. I knew this a few days later, 
when, as a birthday treat, I was taken to see 
the illuminations in our district— we were living 
near the Langham Hotel then — for the marriage 
of some Princess or the birth of some Royal 
baby. Whenever I am away from London — 
never more than ten days at a time— and think 
of her, she comes to me as I saw her then 
from a height of three-foot-five : huge black 
streets rent with loud traffic and ablaze with 
light from roof to pavement ; shop-fronts full 



NOCTURNAL 23 

of magical things, drowned in the lemon light 
which served the town at that time ; and 
crowds of wonderful people whom I had never 
met before and longed deeply to meet again. 
I wondered where they were all going, what 
they would do next, what they would have for 
supper, and why they didn't seem superlatively 
joyful at their good fortune in being able to 
ride at will in cabs and omnibuses and take 
their meals at restaurants. There were jolly 
fellows, graceful little girls, all better clad 
than I, enjoying the sights, and at last, like 
me, disappearing down side -streets to go to 
mysterious, distant homes. 

Homes. Yes, I think that phrase sums up 
my London : the City of Homes. To lie down 
at night to sleep among six million homes, to 
know that all about you, in high garret or 
sumptuous bedchamber, six million people are 
sleeping, or suffering, or loving, is to me the 
most impressive event of my daily day. 

Have you ever, when walking home very late 
at night, looked down the grey suburban 
streets, with their hundred monotonous -faced 
houses, and thought that there sleep men, 
women, and children, free for a few hours 
from lust and hate and fear, all of them 
romantic, all of them striving, in their separate 
ways, to be happy, all of them passionate for 
their little span of life ; and then thought that 
that street is but one of thousands and thou- 
sands which radiate to every point, and that 
all the night air of one city is holding the 
passions of those millions of creatures? I sup- 



24 NOCTURNAL 

pose I have a trite mind, but there is, to me, 
something stupendous in that thought, some- 
thing that makes one despair of ever saying 
anything illuminative about London. 

Often, when I have been returning to 
London from the country, I have been moved 
almost to tears, as the train seemed .to fly 
through clouds and clouds of homes and 
through torrents of windows. Along the miser- 
able countryside it roars, and comes not too 
soon to the far suburbs and the first homes. 
Slowly, softly, the grey incertitude begins to 
flower with their lights, each window a little 
silent prayer. Nearer and nearer to town you 
race, and the warm windows multiply, they 
thicken, they draw closer together, seeming to 
creep into one another's arms for snugness ; 
and, as you roll into the misty sparkle of 
Euston or Paddington, you experience an in- 
effable sense of comfort and security among 
those multitudinous homes. It is, I think, the 
essential homeliness of London that draws the 
Cockney's heart to her when five thousand miles 
away, under blazing suns or hurricanes of hail ; 
for your Cockney, travel and wander as he will, 
is at heart a purely domestic animal, and 
dreams ever of the lighted windows of London. 

Those windows ! I wish some one with the 
right mind would write an essay for me on this 
theme. Why should a lighted window call 
with so subtle a message ? They all have 
their messages — sometimes sweet, sometimes 
sinister, sometimes terrible, sometimes pathetic, 
always irresistible. They haunt me. Indeed, 



NOCTURNAL 25 

when a lighted window claims me, I have 
sometimes hung about outside, impelled almost 
to knock at the door, and find out what is 
happening behind that yellow oblong of 
mystery. 

Some one published a few years ago a book 
entitled " The Soul of London," but I cannot 
think that any one has ever read the soul of 
London. London is not one place, but many 
places ; she has not one soul, but many souls . 
The people of Brondesbury are of markedly 
different character and clime from those of 
Hammersmith. They of Balham know naught 
of those of Walthamstow, and Bayswater is 
oblivious to Barking. The smell, the sound, 
the dress of Finsbury Park are as different 
from the smell, the sound, and the dress of 
Wandsworth Common as though one were 
England and the other Nicaragua. London is 
all things to all men. Day by day she 
changes, not only in external beauty, but in 
temperament . 

As each season recurs, so one feels that 
London can never be more beautiful, never 
better express her inmost spirit. I write these 
lines in September, when we have mornings 
of pearly mist, all the city a Whistler pastel, 
the air bland but stung with sharp points, and 
the squares dressed in many-tinted garments ; 
and I feel that this is the month of months for 
the Londoner . Yet in April, when every parish, 
from Bloomsbury to Ilford, and from Hagger- 
ston to Cricklewood, is a dream of lilac and 
may, and when laburnum and jasmine are 



26 NOCTURNAL 

showering their petals over Shoreditch and 
Bermondsey Wall, when even Cherry Gardens 
Pier has lost its heart in a tangle of apple- 
blossom, and when the statue of James II is 
wreathed about with stars and boughs of haw- 
thorn as fair as a young girl's arms, when 
Kensington Gardens, Brockwell Park, and the 
Tunnel Gardens of Blackwall are ablaze with 
colour and song, and when life riots in the sap 
of the trees as in the blood of the children who 
throng their walks, 'then, I say, London is her- 
self. But I know that when November brings 
the profound fogs and glamorous lights, and 
I walk perilously in the safest streets, knowing 
by sound that I am accompanied, but seeing 
no one, scarce knowing whether I am in Oxford 
Street or the Barking Road, or in Stamboul, 
then I shall feel : " This is the real old 
London." The pallid pomp of the white lilac 
seems to be London in essence. The rich- 
scented winter fog seems to be London in 
essence. The hot, reeking dusk of July seems 
to be London in essence. 

London, I repeat, is all things to all men. 
Whatsoever you may find in the uttermost 
corners of the earth, that you shall find in 
London. It is the city of the world. You 
may stand in Piccadilly Circus at midnight and 
fingerpost yourself to the country of your 
dreams. A penny or twopenny omnibus will 
land you in the heart of France, Switzerland, 
Italy, Germany, Russia, Palestine, China, the 
Malay Peninsula, Norway, Sweden, Holland, 
and Hooligania ; to all of which places I pro- 



NOCTURNAL 27 

pose to take you, for food and drink, laughter 
and chatter, in the pages that follow. I shall 
show you London by night : not the popular 
melodramatic divisions of London rich and 
London poor, but many Londons that you never 
dreamed of and many curious nights. 

London by night. Somehow, the pen stops 
there. Having written that, I feel that the book 
is done. I realize my impotence. My pen 
boggles at the task of adding another word or 
another hundred thousand words which shall 
light up those thunderous syllables. For to 
write about London Nights is to write a book 
about Everything. Philosophy, humanism, 
religion, love, and death, and delight— all 
these things must crowd upon one's pages. 
And once I am started, they will crowd— tire - 
somely, chaotically, tumbling out in that white 
heat of enthusiasm which, as a famous divine 
has said, makes such damned hard reading. 

For the whole of my life, with brief breaks, 
has been spent in London, sometimes work- 
ing by day and playing by night, sometimes 
idling by day and toiling through long mid- 
nights, either in streets, clubs, bars, and strange 
houses, or in the heat and fume of Fleet Street 
offices. But what nights they were ! What 
things have we seen done — not at The Mermaid 
— but in every tiny street and alley of nocturnal 
London ! 

There were nights of delirium when the 
pulses hammered hot in rhythm to the old song 
of Carnival, when one seemed to have reached 
the very apex of living, to have grasped in 



28 NOCTURNAL 

one evening the message of this revolving 
world. There were nights, festive with hoof 
and harness bell, when we swung down the 
jewelled Kensington Road, and became un- 
utterably god-like and silly, kissing little 
gloved hands, a little feather boa, and at last 
little red lips. There were nights, more 
serious, when one walked with the only girl 
that ever happened, changed with every autumn 
season, and left her at a respectable hour at 
her Hampstead door, returning later to kiss 
the gate-post, while the heart sang Salve 
Dimora, and London raced in the blood. 
There were cheery nights of homeward walks 
from the City office at six o'clock, under those 
sudden Octobral dusks, when, almost at a wink, 
London is transformed into one long lake of 
light. There were nights of elusive fog and 
bashful lamp when one made casual acquaint- 
ance on the way home with some darling little 
work-girl, Ethel, or Katie, or Mabel, brown- 
haired or golden, and walked with her and 
perhaps were allowed to kiss her Good-night 
at this or that crossing. What romantic charm 
those little London work -girls have, with their 
short, tossing frocks and tumbling hair ! There 
are no other work-girls in the world to compare 
with them for sheer witchery of face and 
character. The New York work -girl is a holy 
terror. The Parisian grisette has a trim figure 
and a doughy face. The Berlin work -girl 
knows more about viciousness, and looks more 
like a suet dumpling than any one else. But, 
though her figure may not be perfect, the 



NOCTURNAL 29 

London work-girl takes the palm by winsome- 
ness and grace. At seven o'clock every even- 
ing you may meet her in thousands in Oxford 
Street, Villiers Street, Tottenham Court Road, 
or London Bridge, when the pavements lisp in 
reply to the chatter of their little light feet . The 
factory girl of twenty years ago has, I am glad 
to say, entirely disappeared. She was not a 
success. She screwed her hair into sausages 
and rolled them around her ears. She wore a 
straw hat tilted at an absurd angle over her 
nose. She snarled. Her skin was coarse, her 
hands brutal, and she took no care with her- 
self. But the younger generation came along, 
the flapper — and behold, a change. The 
factory girl or work-girl of fourteen or fifteen 
would surprise the ladies of the old school. 
She is neat. She knows enough about things 
to take care of herself, without being coarsened 
by the knowledge. And she has a zest for life 
and a respect for her dear little person which 
give her undisputed title to all that I have 
claimed for her. Long may she reign as one 
of London's beauties ! 

Then there were other nights of madden- 
ing pace, when music and wine, voice and 
laughter harnessed themselves to the chariot 
of youth and dashed us hither and thither. 
There were nights of melancholy, of anguish 
even, nights of failure and solitariness, when 
the last word seemed to be spoken, and the 
leaves and the lamps and all the little dear 
things seemed emptied of their glory. There 
were the nights of labour : dull nights of stress 



30 NOCTURNAL 

and struggle, under the hard white lights, the 
crashing of the presses, and the infuriating 
buzz of the tape machine. There were nights 
of . . . 

But come with me. I have many strange 
things to show you, many queer places to visit, 
if you will take my hand. There are the 
foreign quarters, for one thing. Do you know 
that there are two thousand Chinese per- 
manently settled in London, in their own little 
corner ? Do you know that London has as 
many Russians as Scots among its people ? Do 
you know that there are over two hundred 
thousand black men living here for keeps ? Do 
you know that night after night things are 
going forward downstream which make even 
policemen's blood run hot with anger ? Would 
you like to pass nights of adventure, of delight, 
of battle and tears, and dark, unnameable 
things? If so, come with me. 

It is these nights that I pretend to show you 
in this book, in a little series of cinemato- 
graphic pictures. If you will come with me, 
we will slip through these foreign quarters. 
We will have a bloodthirsty night in the athletic 
saloons of Bethnal Green. We will have a 
bitter night in the dockside saloons. We will 
have a sickening night in sinister places of no 
name and no locality, where the proper people 
do not venture. We will have a glittering night 
in the Hoxton bars. And we will have, too, a 
night among the sweet lights of the Cockney 
home, and among pleasant working-class 
interiors. 



NOCTURNAL 31 

We will revel at the halls, after comfortable 
wines, in the delicious nonsensicalities of Billy 
Merson, Harry Tate, Jimmy Learmouth, or 
Wilkie Bard. We will drop in at a rollicking 
revue, and we will go behind and smoke with 
the artists in their dressing-rooms. We will 
have an evening of keen delight at the delicate 
art of Clarice Mayne, the incomparable 
espieglerie of the incomparable Gaby, or the 
very Latin art of Marie Lloyd. We will watch 
the snowflake dancing of Elsie Craven. We 
will steal a wistful hour of retreat from the 
eternal grief of things at the Bechstein or 
yEolian Hall, and listen to Pachmann, that 
antic genius, or Backhaus, or Marie Hall. We 
will have a night of family recreation at the 
bioscope, and relish the grotesqueries of Max 
Linder, of Ford Sterling, and John Bunny and 
Mary Pickford. We will to the opera to 
hear Caruso and Melba and Scotti. We will 
have a deadly evening at a Pall Mall club. 
We will have a dreary dinner with The Best 
People. We will have a jolly evening at a 
Chelsea studio, among the young people. We 
will have — oh, well, look at the list of chapter 
headings, and you will see. Meantime let me 
ring up and present to you 

Chapter One. 



AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 
ROUND THE HALLS 



MUSIC-HALL BALLET 

Through the sad billoiuing haze of grey and rose, 

Stung with sharp lamps in its most velvet glooms \, 
Drowsy with smoke, and loud with voice and glass, 
Where wine-whipped animations pass and pass — 
Beauty breaks sudden blossoms all around 
In happy riot of rhythm, colour, and pose. 
The radiant hands, the swift, delighted limbs 
Move as in pools of dream the dancer swims, 
Holding our bruted sense in fragrance bound. 

Lily and clover and the white May-flowers, 

And lucid lane afire with honeyed blooms, 

And songs that time nor tears can ever fade, 

Hold not the grace for which ?ny heart has prayed. 

But in this garden of gilt loveliness, 

Lapped by the muffled pulse of hectic hours, 

Something in me awoke to happiness j 

And through the streets of plunging hoof and horn, 

L walked with Beauty to the dim-starred morn. 



AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

ROUND THE HALLS 

Of course, every night spent in London is an 
entertainment night, for London has more 
blood and pace and devil than any city I know. 
Thick as the physical atmosphere is with smoke 
and fog, its moral atmosphere is yet charged 
with a sparkle as of light wine. It is more 
effervescent than any continental city. It is 
the city of cities for learning, art, wit, and— 
Carnival. Go where you please at nightfall 
and Carnival slips into the blood, lighting even 
Bond Street — the dreariest street in town — with 
a little flame of gaiety. I have assisted at 
carnivals and festes in various foreign parts- 
carnivals of students and also of the theatrically 
desperate apaches in the crawling underworlds. 
But, oh, what bilious affairs ! You simply 
flogged yourself into it. You said, as it were : 
" I am in Vienna, or Berlin, or Paris, or 
Brussels, or Marseilles, or Trieste ; therefore, I 
am gay. Of course I am gay." But you 
were not. You were only bored, and the 
show only became endurable after you had 
swallowed various absinthes, vermuths, and 
other rot -gut. 

35 



36 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

All the time you were— or I was — aching for 
Camden Town High Street, and a good old 
London music-hall. I cannot understand those 
folk who sniff at the English music-hall and 
belaud the Parisian shows. These latter are 
to me the most dismal, lifeless form of enter- 
tainment that a public ever suffered. Give 
me the Oxford, the Pavilion, or the Alhambra, 
or even a suburban Palace of Varieties. Ever 
since the age of eight the music-hall has been 
a kind of background for me. Long before 
that age I can remember being rushed through 
strange streets and tossed, breathless, into 
an overheated theatre roaring with colour. 
The show was then either the Moore and 
Burgess Minstrels or the Egyptian Hall, fol- 
lowed by that chief of all child-life enter- 
tainments—tea at a tea-shop. But at eight 
I was initiated into the mysteries of the Halls, 
for a gracious chef d'orchestre permitted me 
to sit in the orchestra of an outlying hall, by 
the side of a cousin who sawed the double 
bass. 

I have loved the music-hall ever since, and I 
still worship that chef d'orchestre, and if I met 
him now I am sure I should bow, though I 
know that he was nothing but a pillow stuffed 
with pose. But in those days, what a man ! Or 
no— not a man — what a demi-god ! You should 
have seen him enter the orchestra on the call : 
" Mr. Francioli, please ! " Your ordinary 
music-hall conductor ducks from below, slips 
into his chair, and his tap has turned on the 
flow of his twenty instruments before you 



ROUND THE HALLS 37 

realize that he is up. But not so Francioli. 
For him the old school, the old manners, 
laddie. He never came into the orchestra. 
He " entered." He would bend gracefully as 
he stepped from the narrow passage beneath 
the stage into the orchestra. He would stand 
upright among his boys for a little minute while 
he adjusted his white gloves. His evening 
dress would have turned George Lashwood sick 
with envy. The perfect shirt of the perfect 
shape of the hour, the tie in the correct mode, 
the collar of the moment, the thick, well-oiled 
hair, profuse and yet well in hand, the right 
flower in the buttonhole at just the right angle 
—so he would stand, with lips pursed in 
histrionic manner, gazing quietly before him, 
smiling, to casual friends, little smiles which 
were nothing more unbending than dignified 
acknowledgment. Then he would stretch a 
god-like arm to the rail, climb into his chair, 
and spend another half -minute in settling him- 
self, turning now and then to inspect the house 
from floor to ceiling. At the tinkle of the 
stage -manager's bell the grand moment would 
come. His hand would sail to the desk, and 
he would take the baton as one might select a 
peach from the dessert-dish. He would look 
benignly upon his boys, tap, raise both re- 
splendent hands aloft, and away he would go 
into the " Zampa " overture. 

His attitude to the show was a study in holy 
detachment. He simply did not see it. He 
would lean back in his chair at a comfortable 
angle, and conduct from the score on his desk. 



38 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

But he never smiled at a joke, he never beamed 
upon a clever turn, he never even exchanged 
glances with the stars. He was Olympian. 
I think he must have met Irving as a young 
man, and have modelled himself on his idio- 
syncrasies. Certainly every pose that ever a 
musician or actor practised was doubled in him. 
I believe he must have posed in his sleep and 
in his bath. Indeed, my young mind used to 
play upon the delicate fancy that such a 
creature could never do anything so common 
as eat or drink or pursue any of the daily 
functions of we ordinary mortals. I shrank 
from conceiving him undressed. . . . 

Once, I remember, he came down from his 
cloudy heights and stood my cousin a drink 
and myself a lemonade. I didn't want to drink 
that lemonade. I wanted to take it home and 
stand it under a glass shade. He himself 
drank what I was told was a foreign drink in 
a tiny glass. He lingered over it, untouched, 
while he discussed with us the exact phrasing 
of the symphony for the star man's song ; then, 
at the call, with a sweep of his almighty arm 
he carried the glass to his lips with a " To 
you, my boy ! " held it poised for a moment, 
set it down, and strode away, followed by rapt 
gazes from the barmaids. 

A stout fellow. He took the conductor's 
chair with all the pomposity of a provincial 
borough official. He tapped for the coda with 
the touch of a king knighting an illustrious 
subject. And when he led the boys through 
the National Anthem, standing up in his place 



ROUND THE HALLS 39 

and facing the house, all lights up— well, there 
are literally no words for it. . . . 

At twelve years old I grew up, and sought 
out my own entertainment, prowling, always 
alone, into strange places. I discovered halls 
that nobody else seemed to know, such as the 
Star at Bermondsey, the Queen's at Poplar, 
and the Cambridge in Commercial Street. I 
crawled around queer bars, wonderfully 
lighted, into dusky refreshment-houses in the 
Asiatic quarter, surely devised by Haroun al 
Raschid, and into softly lit theatres and 
concert-halls. At eighteen, I took my 
pleasures less naively, and dined solemnly in 
town, and toured, solemn and critical, the 
western halls, enjoying everything but regard- 
ing it with pale detachment. Now, however, 
I am quite frank in my delight in this institu- 
tion, which has so crept into the life of the 
highest and the lowest, the vulgar and the intel- 
lectual ; and scarcely a week passes without 
a couple of shows. 

The mechanism of the modern hall is a mar- 
vellous thing. From the small offices about 
Leicester Square, where the big circuits are 
registered, men and women and children are 
sent thousands and thousands of miles to sing, 
dance, act, or play the fool. The circuits often 
control thirty or forty halls in London and the 
provinces, each of which is under the care of 
a manager, who is responsible for its success. 
The turns are booked by the central booking 
manager and allocated either to this or that 
London hall, or to work the entire syndicate 



40 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

tour ; and the bill of each hall, near or far, is 
printed and stage -times fixed weeks in advance. 
The local manager every Saturday night has to 
pay his entire staff, both of stage and house ; 
that is, he not only pays programme girls, 
chuckers-out, electricians, and so forth, but 
each artist, even the £200 a week man, is paid 
in cash at each hall he is working. When a 
new turn is booked for any given hall, the 
manager of that hall must be "in front " and 
watch that turn and its success or non-success 
with the house ; and, at the end of the week, 
a confidential report has to be sent to head- 
quarters in which the manager tells the cold 
truth : whether the show is good, whether it 
"went," how much salary it is worth, and 
whether it is worth a re -booking. 

It is, like journalism, a hard, hard life and 
thankless for every one concerned, from bill- 
topper to sweeper ; yet there is a furious 
colour about it, and I think no one connected 
with it would willingly quit. The most hard- 
worked of all are the electricians. First in the 
hall of an evening, they, with the band and 
the janitors, are the last to leave. Following 
them, at about half -past five (in the case of 
the two-houses halls), come programme girls, 
barmaids, call-boy, stage-manager, shifters, 
and all other stage hands. 

All are philosophers, in their way, and all 
seem to have caught the tang of the profession 
and to be, sub -consciously, of the mummer 
persuasion. I once had a long, long talk with 
the chief electrician of a London hall, or, to 



ROUND THE HALLS 41 

give him the name by which he is best known, 
the limelight man. I climbed the straight iron 
ladder leading from the wings to his little plat- 
form, with only sufficient foothold for two 
people, and there I stood with him for two 
hours, while he waggled spots, floods, and 
focuses, and littered the platform with the 
hastily scrawled lighting -plots of the per- 
formers . 

The limes man is really the most important 
person in the show. Of course, the manager 
doesn't think so, and the stage manager doesn't 
think so, and the carpenter doesn't think so, 
and the band doesn't think so. But he is. 
Many of the music-hall favourites, such as La 
Milo and La Loie Fuller, would have no exist- 
ence but for him. Skilful lighting effects and 
changes of colour are often all that carries a 
commonplace turn to popularity ; and just 
think of the power in that man's hands ! He 
could ruin any young turn he liked simply by 
" blacking her out " ; and, if he feels good, 
he can help many beginners with expert advice . 
The young girl new to the boards, and getting 
her first show, has hardly the slightest idea 
what she shall give him in the way of lighting - 
plot ; very generously, she leaves it to him, 
and he sees her show and lights it as he thinks 
most effective. 

Long before the doors open he is moving 
from box to box, in wings and flies, fixing this, 
altering that, and arranging the other ; and 
cursing his assistants— usually lads of sixteen— 
who have to work the colours from wings, 



42 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

roof, circle, and side of the house. Lights are 
of three kinds : spot, focus, and flood. The 
spot is used on a dark stage, and lights only the 
singer's head and shoulders. The focus lights 
the complete figure. The flood covers the 
stage. Each of these is worked in conjunc- 
tion with eight or nine shaded films placed 
before the arc light. Here is a typical lighting - 
plot, used by a prominent star :— 

First song. Symph. ; all up stage and house. Focus for my 
entrance. White perches and battens for first chorus. Then 
black out, and gallery green focus for dance, changing to ruby 
at cue, and white floods at chord off. 

The limelight man never sees the show. In 
his little cupboard, he hears nothing but the 
hissing of his arcs and the tinkle of the stage - 
manager's prompting bell at the switchboard 
which controls every light in the theatre before 
and behind. He has to watch every movement 
of the artist who is on, but what he or she is 
doing or saying, he does not know. He is, 
perhaps, the only man who has never laughed 
at Little Tich. 

John Davidson, I think, wrote a series of 
poems under the title of " In a Music Hall," 
but these were mainly philosophical, and 
neither he nor others seem to have appreciated 
the colour of the music-hall. It is the most 
delicate of all essences of pleasure, and we 
owe it to the free hand that is given to the 
limelight man. You get, perhaps, a girl in 
white, singing horribly or dancing idiotically, 
but she is dancing in white against a deep blue 



ROUND THE HALLS 43 

curtain, filigreed with silver, and the whole 
flooded in amber light. And yet there are 
those who find the London music-hall dull ! 

The modern music-hall band, too, is a hard- 
working and poorly remunerated concern ; and 
in many cases it really is a band and it does 
make music. It is hard at it for the whole 
of the evening, with no break for refreshment 
unless there be a sketch in the bill. There 
are, too, the matinees and the rehearsal every 
Monday at noon. The boys must be expert 
performers, and adaptable to any emergency. 
Often when a number cannot turn up, a deputy 
has to be called in by 'phone. The band 
seldom knows what the deputy will sing ; there 
is no opportunity for rehearsal ; and some- 
times they have not even an idea of the nature 
of the turn until band parts are put in. This 
means that they must read at sight, that the 
conductor must follow every movement of the 
artist, in order to catch his spasmodic cues for 
band or patter, and that the boys must keep 
one eye on music they have never seen 
before, and the other on their old man's 
stick. 

The conductor, too, works hard at re- 
hearsals ; not, as you might think, with the 
stars, but, like the limelight man, with the 
youngsters. The stars can look after them- 
selves ; they are always sure to go. But the 
nervous beginner needs a lot of attention from 
the band, and it is pleasant to know that in 
most London halls he gets it ungrudgingly. 
A West End chef d'orchestre said to me some 



44 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

time ago : " I never mind how much trouble 
I take over them. If they don't go it means 
such a lot to the poor dears. Harry Lauder 
can sing anything anyhow, and he's all right. 
But I've often found that these girls and boys 
hand me out band parts which are perfectly 
useless for the modern music-hall ; and again 
and again I've found that effective orchestra- 
tion and a helping hand from us pulls a poor 
show through and gets 'em a return booking. 
Half the day of rehearsing is spent with the 
beginners." 

An extraordinary improvement in the 
musical side of vaudeville has taken place 
within the last fifteen years. Go to any hall 
any night, and you will almost certainly hear 
something of Wagner, Mendelssohn, Weber, 
Mozart. I think, too, that the songs are in- 
finitely better than in the old days ; not only 
in the direction of melody but in orchestra- 
tion, which is often incomparably subtle. It 
is, what vaudeville music should be, intensely 
funny, notably in the running chatter of the 
strings and the cunning commentary of wood- 
wind and drums. Pathetic as its passing is, 
one cannot honestly regret the old school. I 
was looking last night at the programme of 
my very first hall, and received a terrible shock 
to my time-sense. Where are the snows of 
yesteryear? Where are the entertainers of 
1895? Not one of their names do I recognize, 
and yet three of them are in heavy type. One 
by one they drop out, and their places are never 
filled. The new man, the new style of humour, 



ROUND THE HALLS 45 

comes along, and attracts its own votaries, who 
sniff, even as I sniff, at the performers of 
past times. Who is there to replace that 
perilously piquant diseur Harry Fragson? 
None. But Frank Tinney comes along with 
something fresh, and we forget the art of 
Fragson, and pay many golden sovereigns to 
Frank to amuse us in the new way. 

Where, too, are the song -writers ? That 
seems to me one of the greatest tragedies of 
the vaudeville world : that a man should com- 
pose a song that puts a. girdle round about the 
globe ; a song that is sung on liners, on troop- 
ships, at feasts in far-away Singapore or 
Mauritius ; a song that inspires men in battle 
and helps soldiers to die ; a song that, like 
' Tipperary," is now the slogan of an Empire ; 
that a man should create such a thing and 
live and die without one in ten thousand of 
his singers knowing even his name. Who com- 
posed "Tipperary"? You don't know? I 
thought not. Who composed " Let's all go 
down the Strand," a song that surely should 
have been adopted as The Anthem of London? 
Who composed " Hot Time in the Old Town 
to-night " — the song that led the Americans to 
victory in Cuba and the Philippines ? We know 
the names of hundreds of finicky little poets 
and novelists and pianists ; but their work 
never shook a nation one inch, or cheered 
men in sickness and despair. Of the men 
who really captured and interpreted the 
national soul we know nothing and care less ; 
and how much they get for their copyrights 



46 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

is a matter that even themselves do not seem 
to take with sufficient seriousness. Yet per- 
sonally I have an infinite tenderness for these 
unknowns, for they have done me more good 
than any other triflers with art-forms. I should 
like to shake the composer of " La Maxixe " 
by the hand, and I owe many a debt of grati- 
tude to the creator of " Red Pepper " and 
" Robert E. Lee." So many of these fugitive 
airs have been part of my life, as they are part 
of every Cockney's life. They are, indeed, a 
calendar. Events date themselves by the song 
that was popular at that time. When, for 
instance, I hear " The Jonah Man " or " Valse 
Bleu," my mind goes back to the days when 
a tired, pale office-boy worked in the City and 
wrote stories for the cheap papers in his 
evenings. When I hear " La Maxixe " I shiver 
with frightful joy. It recalls the hot summer 
of 1906, when I had money and wine and 
possession and love. When I hear " Beautiful 
Doll," I become old and sad ; I want to run 
away and hide myself. When I hear 
" Hiawatha " or " Bill Bailey," I get back the 
mood of that year— a mood murderously bitter. 
Verily, the street organ and its composers are 
things to be remembered in our prayers and 
toasts. 



Every London hall has its own character 
and its own audience. The Pavilion pro- 
gramme is temperamentally distinct from the 
Oxford bill ; the Alhambra is equally marked 



ROUND THE HALLS 47 

from the Empire ; and the Poplar Hippo- 
drome, in patrons and performers, is widely- 
severed from the Euston. The same turns 
are, of course, seen eventually at every hall, 
but never the same group of turns, collectively. 
As for the Hippodrome and the Coliseum — non- 
licensed houses — their show and their audience 
are what one would expect : a first-class show, 
and an audience decorous and Streathamish . 
I think we will not visit either, nor will we visit 
the hall with its world-famous promenade. The 
show is always charming, for it has a captivat- 
ing English premiere ballerina ; but the 
audience is so much more insistent than the 
performance that it claims one's attention ; and 
when you have given it attention you find that 
it is hardly worth it. For this would-be wicked 
audience is even duller than the decorous. It 
is the woman of forty trying to ape the skittish 
flapper. It is the man who says : " I will be 
Bohemian ! Dammit, I will ; so there ! " It 
is jejeune, and as flat as last night's soda- 
water. There is nothing in it. 

Let us try the Oxford, where you are always 
sure of a pleasant crowd, a good all-round 
show, and alcoholic refreshment if you require 
it. There are certain residentials, if I may so 
term them, of the Oxford, whom you may 
always be sure of meeting here, and who will 
always delight you. Mark Sheridan, for 
example, is pretty certain to be there, with 
Wilkie Bard, Clarice Mayne, Phil Ray, Sam 
Mayo, Frank and Vesta (what a darling Vesta 
is ! ), T . E . Dunville, George Formby, and 



48 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

those veterans, Joe Elvin and George 
Chirgwin . 

There is a good overture, and the house is 
comfortable without being gorgeous. There is 
a sense of intimacy about it. The audience, 
too, is always on form. Audiences, by the way, 
have a great deal to do with the success or non- 
success of any particular show, quite apart from 
its merits. There is one famous West End 
hall, which I dare not name, whose audience 
is always " bad "—i.e. cold and inappreciative ; 
the best of all good turns never " goes " at 
that house, and artists dread the week when 
they are booked there. I have seen turns 
which have sent other houses into one convul- 
sive fit, but at this hall the audience has sat 
immovable and colourless while the performers 
wasted themselves in furious efforts to get over 
the footlights. At the Oxford, however, the 
audience is always " with you," and this atmo- 
sphere gets behind and puts the artists, in their 
turn, on the top of their form. The result is 
a sparkling evening which satisfies everybody. 

It is a compact little place, as the music- 
hall should be. In those new caravanserai of 
colossal proportions and capacity, it is impos- 
sible for a man to develop that sense of good- 
fellowship which is inseparable from the 
traditions of the London hall. Intimacy is its 
very essence, and how can a man be intimate 
on a stage measuring something like seventy 
feet in length, a hundred feet in depth, with 
a proscenium over sixty feet high, facing an 
auditorium seating three thousand persons, and 



ROUND THE HALLS 49 

separated from them by a marbled orchestra 
enclosure four or 'five times as wide as it should 
be? It is pathetic to see George Mozart or 
George Robey trying to adapt his essentially 
miniature art to these vasty proportions. 
Physically and mentally he is dwarfed, and his 
effects hardly ever get beyond the orchestra. 
These new halls, with their circles, and upper 
circles, and third circles, and Louis XV Salons 
and Palm Courts, have been builded over the 
bones of old English humour. They are good 
for nothing except ballet, one-act plays with 
large effects, and tabloid grand opera. But 
apparently the public like them, for the Tivoli, 
when rebuilt, is to be as large again as its 
original, and London 'will be deprived of yet 
another home of merriment. 

There is always an acrobat turn in the 
Oxford bill, and always a cheery cross -talk 
item.. The old combination of knockabouts 
or of swell and clown has for the most part 
disappeared ; the Poluskis and Dale and 
O'Malley are perhaps the last survivors. The 
modern idea is the foolish fellow and the dainty 
lady, who are not, I think, so attractive as the 
old style. Personally, I am always drawn to 
a hall where Dale and O'Malley are billed. 
' The somewhat different comedians " is their 
own description of themselves, and the wonder 
is that they should have worked so long in 
partnership and yet succeeded in remaining 
" somewhat different." But each has so welded 
his mood to the other that their joint humour 
is, as it were, a bond as spiritually indissoluble 

4 



50 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

as matrimony. You cannot conceive either Mr. 
Dale or Mr. O'Malley working alone or with 
any other partner. I have heard them crack 
the same quips and tell the same stories for the 
last five years, yet they always get the same big 
laugh and the same large " hand." That is a 
delightful trait about the music-hall— the 
entente existing between performer and 
audience. The favourites seem to be en rapport 
even while waiting in the wings, and the flash- 
ing of their number in the electric frame is 
the signal for a hand of welcome and— in the 
outer halls— whistles and cries. The atmo- 
sphere becomes electric with good-fellowship. 
It is, as Harry Lauder used to sing, "just like 
being at home." It must be splendid to be 
greeted in that manner every night of your 
life and— if you are working two or three halls- 
five times every night ; to know that some 
one wants you, that some one whom you have 
never seen before loves you and is ready to 
pay good money away in order to watch you 
play the fool or be yourself. There they are, 
crowds of people with whom you haven't the 
slightest acquaintance, all familiar with you, 
all longing to meet you again, and all applaud- 
ing you before you have done anything but 
just walk on. They shout " Good boy ! " or 
" Bravo, Harry, or George, or Ernest ! " It 
must indeed be splendid. You are all so— what 
is the word ?— matey, isn't it ? Yes, that's the 
note of the London hall — mateyness. You, up 
there, singing or dancing, have brought men 
and women together as nothing else, not even 



ROUND THE HALLS 51 

the club or saloon bar, can do ; and they sit 
before you, enjoying you and themselves and 
each other. Strangers have been known to 
speak to one another under the mellow atmo- 
sphere which you have created by singing to 
them of the universal things : love, food, drink, 
marriage, birth, death, misfortune, festival, 
cunning, frivolity and — oh, the thousand things 
that make up our daily day. 

There is just one man still among us who 
renders these details of the Cockney's daily 
day in more perfect fashion than any of his 
peers. He is of the old school, I admit, but he 
is nevertheless right on the spot with his points 
and his psychology. His name is Harry 
Champion. Perhaps you have seen him and 
been disgusted with what you would call the 
vulgarity of his songs. But what you call 
his vulgarity, rny dears, is just everyday life ; 
and everyday life is always disgusting to the 
funny little Bayswaterats, who are compact of 
timidity and pudibonderie. The elderly ado- 
lescent has no business at the music-hall ; his 
place is the Baptist Chapel or some other place 
remote from all connection with this splendid 
world of London, tragic with suffering and 
song, high endeavour and defeat. It is people 
of this kidney who find Harry Champion 
vulgar. His is the robust, Falstaffian humour 
of old England, which, I am glad to think, 
still exists in London and still pleases Lon- 
doners, in spite of efforts to Gallicize our enter- 
tainments and substitute obscenity and the sala- 
cious leer for honest fun and the frank roar 



52 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

of laughter. If you want to hear the joy of 
living interpreted in song and dance, then go 
to the first hall where the name of Harry 
Champion is billed, and hear him sing " Boiled 
Beef and Carrots," " Baked Sheep's Heart 
stuffed with Sage and Onions," " Whatcher, 
me Old Brown Son ! " " With me old Hambone," 
" William the Conqueror," " Standard Bread." 
If you are sad, you will feel better. If you 
are suicidal, you will throw the poison away, 
and you will not be the first man whose life has 
been saved by a low comedian. You may 
wonder why this eulogy of food in all these 
songs. The explanation is simple. In the 
old days, the music-hall was just a drinking 
den, and all the jolly songs were in praise of 
drink. Now that all modern halls are un- 
licensed, and are, more or less, family affairs 
to which Mr. Jenkinson may bring the wife and 
the children, and where you can get nothing 
stronger than non-alcoholic beers, or dry 
ginger, the Bacchanalian song is out of place. 
Next to drinking, of course, the Londoner loves 
eating. Mr. Harry Champion, with the insight 
of genius, has divined this, and therefore he 
sings about food, winning much applause, per- 
sonal popularity, and, I hope, much money. 

Watch his audience as he sings. Mark the 
almost hypnotic hold he has over them ; not 
only over pit and gallery but over stalls as 
well, and the well-groomed loungers who have 
just dropped in. I defy any sane person to 
listen to " Whatcher, me Old Brown Son ! " 
without chortles of merriment, profound merri- 



ROUND THE HALLS 53 

ment, for you don't laugh idly at Harry 
Champion. His gaiety is not the superficial 
gaiety of the funny man who makes you laugh 
but does nothing else to you. He does you 
good. I honestly believe that his performance 
would beat down the frigid steel ramparts that 
begird the English " lady." His songs thrill 
and tickle you as does the gayest music of 
Mozart. They have not the mere lightness of 
merriment, but, like that music, they have the 
deep -plumbing gaiety of the love of life, for joy 
and sorrow. 

But let us leave the front of the house and 
wander in back of a typical hall. Here is 
an overcharged atmosphere, feverish of 
railway-station. There is an entire lack of 
any system ; everything apparently confused 
rush. Artists dashing out for a second house 
many miles away. Artists dashing in from 
their last hall, some fully dressed and made-up, 
pthers swearing at their dressers and dragging 
baskets upstairs, knowing that they have three 
minutes in which to dress and make-up before 
their call. As one rushes in with a cheery 
" Evening, George ! " to the stage -door keeper, 
he is met by the boy— the boy being usually a 
middle-aged ex-Army man of 45 or 50. 

" Mr. Merson's on, sir." 

" Righto ! " 

He dashes into his dressing-room, which he 
shares with three others, and then it is Vestl la 
giubba. . . . The dressing-room is a long, 
narrow room, with a slab running the length 
of the wall, and four chairs. The slab is 



54 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

backed by a long, low mirror, and is littered 
with make-up tins and pots. His dresser hurls 
himself on the basket, as though he owed it 
a grudge. He tears off the lid. He dives 
head foremost into a foam of trousers, coats, 
and many-coloured shirts. He comes to the 
surface breathless, having retrieved a shape- 
less mass of stuff. He tears pieces of this 
stuff apart, and flings them, with apparent 
malice, at his chief, and, somehow, they seem 
to stay wherever he flings them. The chief 
shouts from a cloud of orange wig and patch- 
work shirt for a soda-and-milk, and from some 
obscure place of succour there actually appears 
a soda-and-milk. A hand darts from the leg 
of a revolving pair of trousers, grabs the glass 
and takes a loud swig. The boy appears at 
the door. 

" Mr. Merson coming off, sir ! " 

" Right-*? ! and blast you ! " 

" No good blasting me, sir ! " 

From far away, as from another world, he 
hears the murmur of a large body of people, 
the rolling of the drum, the throbbing of the 
double-bass, the wail of the riddles, sometimes 
the thud of the wooden-shoe dancer, and some- 
times a sudden silence as the music dims away 
to rubbish for the big stunt of the trapeze 
performer . 

He subsides into a chair. The dresser jams 
a pair of side-spring boots on his feet while 
he himself adjusts the wig and assaults his 
face with sticks of paint. 

The boy appears again. He shoots his 



ROUND THE HALLS 55 

bullet head through the door, aggressively. 
" Mr. Benson, please ! " This time he is really 
cross. Clearly he will fight Mr. Benson before 
long. 

But Mr. Benson dashes from his chair and 
toddles downstairs, and is just in time to slip 
on as the band finishes his symphony for the 
fourth time . Once on, he breathes more freely, 
for neglect of the time -sheet is a terrible thing, 
and involves a fine. If your time is 8.20, it 
is your bounden duty to be in the wings ready 
to go on at 8.17; otherwise . . . trouble and 
blistering adjectives. 

While he is on, the boy is chasing round the 
dressing-rooms for the " next call." This 
happens to be a black-face comedian, who is 
more punctual than Mr. Benson. He is all 
in order, and at the call : " Mr. Benson's on, 
Harry ! " he descends and stands in the wings, 
watching with cold but friendly gaze the antics 
of Mr. Benson, and trying to sense the temper 
of the house. Mr. Benson is at work. In another 
minute he will be at work, too. Mr. Benson is 
going well— he seems to have got the house. 
He wonders whether he will get the house — or 
the bird. He is about to give us something 
American : to sing and dance to syncopated 
melody. America may not have added great 
store to the world's music, but at least she has 
added to the gaiety of nations. She has given 
us ragtime, the voice of the negroid Bacchus, 
which has flogged our flagging flesh to new 
sensations ; she has given us songs fragrant 
of Fifth Avenue, and with the wail of the 



56 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

American South ; and she has given us nigger 
comedians. Harry doesn't much care whether 
he "goes" or not. They are a philosophical 
crowd, these Vaudevillians. If one of them 
gets the bird, he has the sympathy of the rest 
of the bill. Rotten luck. If he goes well, 
he has their smiles. Of course, there are cer- 
tain jealousies here as in every game ; but 
very few. You see, they never know. . . . 
The stars never know when their reign will 
end, and they, who were once bill-toppers, 
will be shoved in small type in obscure corners 
of the bill at far distant provincial halls. That 
is why the halls, like journalism, is such a 
great game. You never know. . . . The un- 
happiest of the whole bill of a hall are " first 
call" and "last call." Nobody is there to 
listen to " first call " ; everybody has bolted by 
the time " last call " is on. Only the orchestra 
and the electricians remain. They, like the 
poor, are always with them. 

After the show, the orchestra usually breaks 
up into parties for a final drink, or sometimes 
fraternizes with the last call and makes a bunch 
for supper at Sam Isaacs'. After supper, home 
by the last car to Camberwell or Camden 
Town, seeking — and, if not too full of supper, 
finding — a chaste couch at about two a.m. The 
star, of course, does nothing so vulgar. He 
motors home to Streatham or St. John's Wood 
or Clapham Common, and plays billiards or 
cards until the small hours. A curious wave 
of temperance lately has been sweeping over 
the heads of the profession, and a star seldom 



; 



ROUND THE HALLS 57 

has a drink until after the show. The days are 
gone when the lion comique would say : " No, 
laddie, I don't drink. Nothing to speak of, that 
is. I just have ten or twelve — just enough to 
make me think I'm drunk. Then I keep on 
until I think I'm sober. Then I know I'm 
drunk ! " They are beginning, unfortunately 
for their audiences, to take themselves 
seriously. This is a pity, for the more spon- 
taneous and inane they are, the more they are 
in their place on the vaudeville stage. There 
is more make-believe and hard work on the 
halls to-day, and I think they are none the 
better for it. As soon as art becomes self- 
conscious, its end is near ; and that, I am 
afraid, is what is happening to-day. A quieter 
note has crept into the whole thing, a more 
facile technique ; and if you develop technique 
you must develop it at the expense of every 
one of those more robust and essential quali- 
ties. The old entertainers captured us by 
deliberate unprovoked assault on our attention. 
But to-day they do not take us by storm. They 
woo us and win us slowly, by happy craft ; and 
though your admiration is finally wrung from 
you, it is technique you are admiring— nothing 
more. All modern art — the novel, the picture, 
the play, the song — is dying of technique. 

I have only the very slightest acquaintance 
with those gorgeous creatures — the £200 a 
week men — who top the bill to-day ; only the 
acquaintance of an occasional drink in their 
rooms. But I have known, and still know, 
many of the rank and file, and delightful people 



58 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

they are. As a boy of fifteen, I remember 
meeting, on a seaside front, a member of a 
troupe then appearing called The Boy Guards- 
men. He was a sweet child. Fourteen years 
old he was, and he gave me cigarettes, and he 
drank rum and stout, and was one of the most 
naive and cleanly simple youths I ever met. 
He had an angelic trust in the good of every- 
thing and everybody. He worshipped me 
because I bought him a book he wanted. He 
believed that the ladies appearing in the same 
bill at his hall were angels. He loved the 
manager of his troupe as a great-hearted 
gentleman. He thought his sister was the most 
radiant and high-souled girl that Heaven had 
yet sent to earth. And it was his business to 
sing, twice nightly, some of, the smuttiest songs 
I have heard on any stage. Yet he knew 
exactly why the house laughed, and what por- 
tions of the songs it laughed at. He knew that 
the songs went because they were smutty, yet 
such was his innocence that he could not under- 
stand why smut should not be laughed at. He 
was a dear ! 

There was another family whom I still visit. 
Father and Mother are Comedy Acrobats and 
Jugglers. Night by night they appear in 
spangled tights, and Father resins his hands in 
view of the audience, and lightly tosses the 
handkerchief to the wings ; and then bends a 
stout knee, and cries " Hup ! " and catches 
Mumdear on the spring and throws her in a 
double somersault. There are two girls of thir- 
teen and fifteen, and a dot of nine ; and they 



ROUND THE HALLS 59 

regard Dad and Mumdear just as professional 
pals, never as parents. This is Dad's idea ; he 
dislikes being a father, but he enjoys being an 
elder brother, and leading the kids on in 
mischief or jolly times. 

I was having drinks one Saturday night, 
after the show, with Dad, in a scintillating 
Highbury saloon, when there was a sudden 
commotion in the passage. A cascade of 
voices ; a chatter of feet ; the yelping of a 
dog. 

"What's that? " I murmured, half interested. 

" Only the bother and the gawdfers," he 
answered. 

"Eh?" 

" I said it's the bother and the gawdfers. . . . 
Rhyming slang, silly ass. The Missus and the 
kids. Bother-and-strife . . . wife. Gawd- 
forbids . . . kids. See? Here they come. 
No more mouth-shooting for us, now." 

They came. Mumdear came first — very 
large, submerged in a feather boa and a 
feathered hat ; salmon pink as to the bust, 
cream silk as to the skirt. The kids came next, 
two of the sweetiest, merriest girls I know. 
Miss Fifteen simply tumbled with brown curls 
and smiles ; she was of The Gay Glow-worms, 
a troupe of dancers. Miss Thirteen tripped 
over the dog and entered with a volley of 
giggles and a tempest of light stockinged legs, 
which spent themselves at once when she 
observed me. In a wink she became the 
demure maiden. She had long, straight hair 
to the waist, and the pure candour of her face 



60 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

gave her the air of an Italian madonna. She 
was of The Casino Juveniles. We had met 
before, so she sidled up to me and inquired 
how I was and what's doing. Within half a 
minute I was besieged by tossing hair and 
excited hands, and an avalanche of talk about 
shop, what they were doing, where they were 
this week, where next, future openings, and 
so forth ; all of which was cut short by the 
good-humouredly gruff voice of the landlord, 
inquiring— 

" That young lady over fourteen? " 

" Well . . . er . . . she looks it, don't 
she? " said Dad. 

" Dessay she does. But is she? " 

" Well . . . tell you the truth, Ernest, she 
ain't. But she will be soon." 

" Well, she can come back then. But she's 
got to go now." 

" Righto ! Come on, Joyce. You got the 
bird. Here, Maudie, take her home. Both 
of you. Straight home, mind. And get the 
supper ready. And don't forget to turn the 
dog out. And here — get yourselves some 
chocolates, little devils." He pulled out a 
handful of silver. " There you are— all the 
change I got." 

He gave Maudie four shillings, and Joyce 
half a crown — for chocolates ; and Maudie 
tripped out with flustered hair and laughing 
ribbons, and Joyce fell over the dog, and the 
swing-doors caught her midwise, and there was 
a succession of screams fainting into the 
distance, and at last silence. 



ROUND THE HALLS 61 

" Thank God they're gone, bless the little 
devils ! " And Dad raised his dry ginger in 
salutation ; while Mumdear allowed me to get 
her a port -and -lemonade. It had apparently 
been a stiff show. 

" Funny, but ... if you notice it . . . 
when one thing goes wrong everything goes. 
First off, Arthur wasn't there to conduct. His 
leader had to take first three turns, and he 
doesn't know us properly and kept missing the 
cues for changes. See, we ihave about six 
changes in our music, and when you kind of 
get used to doing a stunt to ' Mysterious Rag,' 
it sort of puts you off if the band is still doing 
' Nights of Gladness.' Then the curtain 
stuck, and we was kept hanging about for a 
minute, and had to speed up. Then one of our 
ropes give, and I thought to myself : ' That's 
put the fair old khybosh on it, that has.' Gave 
me — well, you know, put me a bit nervy, like. 
We missed twice. Least, George sayS I missed, 
but I say he did. So one thing and another 
it's been a bad night. However, we went all 
right, so here's doing it again, sonny. 
Thumbs up ! " 

She beamed upon me a very large stage 
beam, as though she had got the range of the 
gallery and meant to reach it. But it was 
sincere, and though she makes three of me, she 
is a darling, very playful, very motherly, very 
strong-minded. Indeed, a Woman. She 
fussed with the feathers of her boa, and sat 
upright, as though conscious of her athletic 
proportions and the picture she was making 



62 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

against the gilded background of the saloon. 
She had an arm that — but I can say no more 
than that paraphrase of Meredith : She Had 
An Arm. When you remember that often four 
times nightly she holds her husband — no light- 
weight, I assure you — balanced on her right, 
while, with her left, she juggles with a bamboo- 
table and a walking-stick, you can realize that 
She Has An Arm, and you can understand the 
figure she cuts in commonplace intercourse. 
You are simply overwhelmed physically and 
morally. 

" But look here, sonny, why not come home 
and have a bit of supper with us ? That is, 
if there is any. But come round, and have a 
plate of grab-what-you-can-and-make-the-best- 
of-it, eh? I think we got some claret and I 
know George's got a drop of Three-Star. 
Young Beryl's off to-morrow on the Northern 
tour with the White Bird Company, so of course 
we're in a devil of a muddle. George's sister's 
round there, packing her. But if you'll put 
up with the damned old upset, why, come right 
along." 

So we drank up, and I went right along to 
a jolly little flat near Highbury Quadrant. As 
we entered the main room, I heard a high, thin 
voice protesting — 

But there were times, dear, 
When you made me feel so bad ! 

And there, flitting about the room in dainty 
lace petticoat, and little else, was young Beryl, 
superintending her aunt's feverish struggles 



ROUND THE HALLS 63 

with paint and powder-jars, frocks, petties, silk 
stockings, socks, and wraps, snatching these 
articles from a voluminous wardrobe and toss- 
ing them, haphazard, into a monumental dress- 
ing-basket, already half-full with two life-size 
teddy-bears. 

She was a bright little^ maid, and, though we 
had not met before, we made friends at once. 
She had a mass of black curls, eyes dancing 
with elfin lights, a face permanently flushed, 
and limbs never in repose. She was, even in 
sleep — as I have seen her since — wonderfully 
alive, with that hectic energy that is born of 
spending oneself to the last ounce unceasingly ; 
in her case, the magnetic, self-consuming 
energy of talent prematurely developed. Her 
voice had distinctive quality, unusual in little 
girls of nine. When she talked, it was with 
perfect articulation and a sense of the value 
and beauty of words. Her manners were 
prettily wayward, but not precocious. She 
moved with the quiet self-possession of one 
who has something to do and knows just how 
to do it, one who took her little self seriously 
but not conceitedly. 

On the stage she has been the delight of 
thousands. Her gay smile, her delicate graces, 
and her calm, unfaltering stage manner have 
touched the hearts of all sorts and conditions, 
from boxes to bar. Eight times a week, six 
evenings and two matinees, she was booked 
to take the stage from the rise of the curtain 
and leave it for scarcely more than two minutes 
at a time until the fall. This was by no means 



64 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

her first show. Before that she had been 
pantomime fairy, orphan child in melodrama, 
waif in a music-hall sketch, millionaire's pet 
in a Society play, a mischievous boy in a 
popular farce, dancer in a big ballet, and now 
the lead in a famous fairy play, at a salary of 
ten pounds a week. No wonder Dad and 
Mumdear, and even the elder girls, regarded 
her with a touch of awe and worship. But, 
feted as she is, she has never been spoilt ; and 
she remains, in spite of her effervescent life, a 
genuine child. The pet of the crowd behind 
the scenes, the pet of the house in front, she is 
accustomed, every night, to salvoes of applause, 
to flowers left at the stage -door, and to boxes 
of chocolates handed over the footlights. 
Night after night, in dance or make-believe of 
life, she spends herself to exhaustion for the 
pleasure of the multitude ; night after night, 
in a tinsel-world of limelight and grease-paint, 
she plays at being herself. 

I rather wondered what she thought of it 
all, and whether she enjoyed it ; but, like most 
little girls, she was shy of confidences. Perhaps 
she wondered at it all, perhaps sometimes she 
felt very tired of it all — the noise, the dust, the 
glamour, and the rush. But she would not 
admit it. She would only admit her joy at the 
ten pounds a week, out of which Mumdear 
would be able to send her favourite cousin 
Billie to the seaside. So I had to leave it at 
that, and help with the packing ; and at about 
a quarter to one in the morning supper was 
announced as ready, and we all sat down. 



ROUND THE HALLS 65 

I forget what we ate. There was some 
mystery of eggs, prepared by Joyce and 
Maudie. There were various preserved meats, 
and some fruit, and some Camembert, and 
some very good Sauterne, to all of which you 
helped yourself. There was no host or hostess . 
You just wandered round the table, and forked 
what you wanted, and ate it, and then came up 
for more. When we had done eating, Dad 
brought out a bottle of excellent old brandy, 
and Joyce and Maudie made tea for the ladies, 
and Beryl sat on my knee until half -past two 
and talked scandal about the other members 
of the White Bird Company. 

At three o'clock I broke up a jolly evening, 
and departed, Maudie and Joyce accompanying 
me to Highbury Corner, where I found a 
vagrant cab. 

Perhaps, after the cleansing of the London 
stage, its most remarkable feature is this 
sudden invasion of it by the child. There has 
been much foolish legislation on the subject, 
but, though it is impossible artistically to justify 
the presence of children in drama, I think I 
would not have them away. I think they have 
given the stage, professionally, something that 
it is none the worse for. 

All men, of course, are actors. In all men 
exists that desire to escape from themselves, 
to be somebody else, which is expressed, in 
the nursery, by their delight in " dressing up," 
and, in later life, by their delight in watching 
others pretend. But the child is the most 
happy actor, for to children acting is as natural 

5 



66 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

as eating, and their stage work always con- 
vinces because they never consciously act — 
never, that is, aim at preconceived effects, but 
merge their personalities wholly in this or that 
idea and allow themselves to be driven by it. 
When to this common instinct is added an 
understanding of stage requirements and a 
sharp sense of the theatre, the result, as in the 
cases of Iris Hawkins, Bella Terry, and Cora 
Gofhn, is pure delight. We live in a little age, 
and, in the absence of great figures, we are 
perhaps prone to worship little things, and 
especially to cultivate to excess the wonder- 
child and often the pseudo-wonder-child. But 
the gifted stage-children have a distinct place, 
for they give us no striving after false quanti- 
ties, no theatricality, and their effects are in 
proportion to the strength of their genius. Of 
course, when they are submitted to the training 
of a third-rate manager, they become mere 
mechanical dolls, full of shrill speech and dis- 
torted posings that never once touch the 
audience. You have examples of this in any 
touring melodrama. These youngsters are 
taught to act, to model themselves on this or 
that adult member of the company, are made 
conscious of an audience, and are carefully pre- 
vented from being children. The result is a 
horror. The child is only an effective actor so 
long as it does not " act." As soon as these 
youngsters reach the age of fifteen or sixteen 
the dramatic faculty is stilled, and lies dormant 
throughout adolescence. They are useless on 
the stage, for, beginning to " find themselves," 



ROUND THE HALLS 67 

they become conscious artists, and, in the 
theatrical phrase, it doesn't come off. It is 
hardly to be expected that it should, for acting, 
of all the arts, most demands a knowledge 
of the human mind which cannot be encom- 
passed even by genius at seventeen. That is 
why no child can ever play such a part as that 
of the little girl in Hauptmann's " Hannele." 
Intuition could never cover it. Nor should 
children ever be set to play it. The child 
of melodrama is an impossibility and an 
ugliness. Children on the stage must be 
childish, and nothing else. They must not be 
immature men and women. Superficially, of 
course, as I have said, every child of talent 
becomes world-weary and sophisticated ; the 
bright surface of the mind is dulled with things 
half -perceived. But this, the result of moving 
in an atmosphere of hectic brilliance, devoid of 
spiritual nourishment, is not fundamental : it 
is but a phase. Old-fashioned as the idea 
may be, it is still true that artificial excitement 
is useful, indeed necessary, to the artist ; and 
conditions of life that would spoil or utterly 
destroy the common person are, to him, 
entirely innocuous, since he lives on and by 
his own self. And, though some stage children 
may become prematurely wise, in the depths of 
their souls, they must preserve, fresh and 
lovely, the child-spirit, the secret glory shared 
by all children. If they lose that, they have no 
justification of any kind. 

There was a little girl on the London stage 
some few years ago whom I have always 



68 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

remembered with joy. I first saw her acci- 
dentally at a Lyceum pantomime. That panto- 
mime, and every subsequent show, I saw again 
and again ; and I went always for the dancing 
of this little girl — Marjorie Carpenter. 

I had had, on that first occasion, a long and 
boring Saturday in Fleet Street, writing up 
difficult stuff for a North Country Sunday 
paper. At seven o'clock we turned out, and 
had one of those completely bad dinners of 
which Fleet Street alone holds the secret. We 
loafed in and out of various places, and eventu- 
ally reached Wellington Street, and some one 
suggested dropping in. So we dropped in, 
drugged with wine and other narcotics, and, 
being young, we saw ourselves pathetically, as 
it were, a little too conscious of the squalor of it 
all. Frankly, the show bored me, though, as a 
rule, I love pantomime and all other vulgar 
things ; and I was suggesting a retreat when 
they suddenly rang down on the funny man, 
and the theatre was plunged in a velvet gloom. 
Here and there sharp lamps stung the dusks. 
There was a babble of voices. The lights of 
the orchestra gleamed subtly. The pit was a 
mist of lilac, which shifted and ever shifted. 
A chimera of fetid faces swam above the 
gallery rail. Wave after wave of lifeless heads 
rolled on either side of us. 

Then there was a quick bell ; the orchestra 
blared the chord on, and I sat up. Something 
seemed about to happen. Back at the bar 
was a clamour of glass and popping cork, and 
bashful cries of " Order, please ! " The curtain 



ROUND THE HALLS 69 

rushed back on a dark, blank stage. One per- 
ceived, dimly, a high sombre draping, very far 
up-stage. There was silence. Next moment, 
from between the folds, stole a wee slip of a 
child in white, who stood, poised like a startled 
fawn. Three pale spot -limes swam uncertainly 
from roof and wings, drifted a moment, then 
picked her up, focusing her gleaming hair and 
alabaster arms. I looked at the programme. 

It was Marjorie Carpenter. 

The conductor tapped. A tense silence ; 
and then our ears were drenched in the ballet 
music of Delibes. Over the footlights it 
surged, and, racing down-stage, little Marjorie 
Carpenter flung herself into it, caressing and 
caressed by it, shaking, as it seemed, little 
showers of sound from her delighted limbs. 
On that high, vast stage, amid the crashing 
speed of that music and the spattering fire 
of the side -drums, she seemed so frail, so 
lost, so alone that — oh ! one almost ached 
for her. 

But then she danced : and if she were alone 
at first, she was not now alone. She seemed at 
a step to people the stage with little com- 
panies of dream. 

I say she danced, and I must leave it at 
that. But I have told you nothing . . . 
nothing. Little Twinkletoes gave us more than 
dance ; she gave us the spirit of Childhood, 
bubbling with delight, so fresh, so contagious 
that I could have wept for joy of it. It was a 
thing of sheer lyrical loveliness, the lovelier, 
perhaps, because of its very waywardness and 



70 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

disregard of values. Here was no thing of 
trick and limelight ; none of the heavy-lidded, 
wine -whipped glances of the adult ballerina. 
It was Blake's " Infant Joy " materialized. She 
was a poem. 

In the heated theatre, where the opiate air 
rolled like a fog, we sat entranced before her 
— the child, elfish and gay and hungry for 
the beauty of life ; the child, lit by a glamorous 
light. Far below the surface this light burns, 
and seldom is its presence revealed, save by 
those children who live very close to Nature : 
gipsy and forest children. But every child 
possesses it, whether bred in the whispering 
wood or among sweetstuff shops and the High- 
bury 'buses ; and I, for one, recognized it im- 
mediately this lovely child carried it over the 
footlights of the Lyceum Theatre. 

Hither and thither she drifted like a white 
snowflake, but all the time . . . dancing ; and 
one had a sense of dumb amazement that so 
frail a child, her fair arms and legs as slender 
as a flower-stem, should so fill that stage and 
hold the rapt attention of a theatreful of people. 
Here was evidence of something stronger than 
mere mastery of ballet technique. Perfect her 
dancing was. There was no touch of that 
automatic movement so noticeable in most child 
dancers. When she went thus or so, or flitted 
from side to side of the stage, she clearly knew 
just why she did it, why she went up-stage 
instead of down. But she had more than mere 
technical perfection : she had personality, that 
strange, intangible something so rare in the 



ROUND THE HALLS 71 

danseuse, that wanders over the footlights. The 
turn of a foot, the swift side look, the awaken- 
ing smile, the nice lifting of an eyebrow — these 
things were spontaneous. No amount of 
rehearsal or managerial thought could have 
produced effects so brilliantly true to the 
moment. 

I am not exaggerating. I am speaking quite 
literally when I say that, for me, at that time, 
Marjorie Carpenter and her dancing were the 
loveliest things in London. She danced as no 
child has ever danced before or since, though, 
of course, it would never do to say so. It 
was the most fragile, most evanescent genius 
that London had seen ; and nobody cared, 
nobody recognized it. It attracted no more 
attention than the work of any other child - 
actress. Yet you never saw such gazelle-like 
swiftness and grace. Perhaps you will smile 
if I say that she had more grace in the turn of 
one lily wrist than Pavlova in a complete move- 
ment. But so it was. Or so I remember it. 
It may be that Time has knocked one's values 
out of shape : a favourite trick of Time's. Yet 
I do not think so ; for it is only five years since 
she was dancing. 

When she had completed one dance, a new 
back-cloth fell, and she danced again and yet 
again. I forget what she danced, but it spoke 
to me of a thousand forgotten things of child- 
hood. I know that I touched finger-tips with 
something more generously pure and happy 
than I had met for years . Through the hush of 
lights the sylvan music stole, and Marjorie 



72 AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT 

Carpenter stole with it, and every step of her 
whispered of April and May. 

The curtain fell. I was jerked back to 
common things. But I was in no mood for 
them. The house applauded. It thought it 
was applauding Marjorie Carpenter for her 
skill as a dancer. It was really worshipping 
something greater — that elusive quality which 
she had momentarily snatched from nothing 
and presented to them : the eternal charm and 
mystery of Childhood. 

She took five calls ; and the orchestra gave 
her a final chord off. Then a sudden tempest 
of lights shattered the dusks, a rude chorus was 
blared, the " rag " was rung up for the prin- 
cipal boy, and I and a few others tumbled out 
into the glistening lamplight of the Strand. 



A CHINESE NIGHT 
LIMEHOUSE 







AT LIME HO USE 

Yellow man, yellow man, where have you been ? 
Down the Pacific, where wonders are seen. 
Up the Pacific, so glamorous and gay, 
Where night is of blue, and of silver the day. 

Yellow man, yellow ?nan, what did you there ? 
I loved twenty ?naids who were loving and fair. 
Their cheeks were oj velvet, their kisses were fire, 
I looked at them boldly and had my desire. 

Yellow man, yellow man, what dc you know ? 
That living is lovely wherever I go; 
And lovelier, I say, since when soft winds have passed 
The tides will race over my bosom at last. 

Yellow man, yellow man, why do you sigh ? 
For flowers that are sweet, and for flowers that die. 
For days in fair waters and nights in strange lands, 
For faces forgotten and little lost hands. 



A CHINESE NIGHT 

LIMEHOUSE 

It was eight o'clock. We had dined in Soho, 
and conversed amiably with Italian waiters and 
French wine -men. There were now many 
slack hours before us, and nothing wherewith 
to tighten them. We stood in the low-lit gaiety 
of Old Compton Street, and wondered. We 
were tired of halls and revues ; the theatres 
had started work ; there was nothing left but 
to sit in beer-cellars and listen to dreary bands 
playing ragtimes and bilious waltzes. 

Now it is a good tip when tired of the West, 
and, as the phrase goes, at a loose end, to go 
East, young man, go East. You will spot a 
winner every time, if it is entertainment you 
seek, by mounting the first East-bound omnibus 
that passes. For the East is eternally fresh, 
because it is alive. The West, like all things 
of fashion, is but a corpse electrified. They 
are so tired, these lily-clad ladies and white- 
fronted gentlemen, of their bloodless, wine- 
whipped frivolities. They want to enjoy them- 
selves very badly, but they do not know how 
to do it. They know that enjoyment only 
means eating the same dinner at a different 

75 



76 A CHINESE NIGHT 

restaurant, and afterwards meeting the same 
tired people, or seeing the same show, the same 
songs, jests, dances at different houses. But 
Eastward . . . there, large and full, blossoms 
Life — a rather repellent Life, perhaps, for Life 
is always that. Hatred, filth, love, battle, and 
death — all elemental things are here, undis- 
guised ; and if elemental things repel you, my 
lamb, then you have no business to be on this 
planet. Night, in the particular spots of the 
East to which these pages take you, shows you 
Life in the raw, stripped of its silken 
wrappings ; and it is of passionate interest to 
those for whom humanity is the only Book. In 
the West pleasure is a business ; in the East it 
is recreation. In the East it may be a thinner, 
poorer body, but it is alive. The people are 
sick, perhaps, with toil ; but below that sick- 
ness there is a lust for enjoyment that lights 
up every little moment of their evening, as 
I shall show you later, when we come to 
Bethnal Green, Hoxton, and the athletic 
saloons. You may listen to GlazounofT's 
" L'Automne Bacchanale " at the Palace 
Theatre, danced by Pavlova, but I should not 
look in Shaftesbury Avenue or Piccadilly for 
its true spirit. Rather, I should go to Kings- 
land Road, Tunnel Gardens, Jamaica Road ; 
to the trafficked highways, rent with naphthas, 
that rush about East India Dock. There, when 
the lamps are lighted, and bead the night with 
tears, and the sweet girls go by, and throw their 
little laughter to the boys— there you have your 
true Bacchanales. 



LIMEHOUSE 77 

So, leaving the fixed grin of decay in 
Coventry Street, we mounted a motor-'bus, and 
dashed gaily through streets of rose and 
silver — it was October — and dropped off by the 
Poplar Hippodrome, whose harsh signs lit the 
night to sudden beauty. 

To turn from East India Dock Road to West 
India Dock Road is to turn, contradictorily, 
from West to East, from a fury of lights and 
noise and faces into a stillness almost chaste. 
At least, chaste is the first word you think of. 
In a few seconds you feel that it is the wrong 
epithet. Something . . . something there is 
in this dusky, throttled byway that seems to be 
crawling into your blood. The road seems to 
slink before you ; and you know that, once in, 
you can only get out by retracing your steps or 
crossing into the lost Isle of Dogs. Against 
the wrath of October cloud, little low shops 
peer at you. In the sharp shadows their lights 
fall like swords across your path. The 
shuttered gloom of the eastern side shows 
strangely menacing. Each whispering house 
seems an abode of dread things . Each window 
seems filled with frightful eyes. Each corner, 
half -lit by a timid gas-jet, seems to harbour 
unholy creatures. A black man, with Oriental 
features, brushes against you. You collide 
with a creeping yellow man. He says some- 
thing — it might be Chinese or Japanese or 
Philippinese jargon. A huge Hindoo shuffles, 
cat-like, against the shops. A fried-fish bar, 
its window covered with Scandinavian phrases, 
flings a burst of melodious light for which you 
are grateful. 



78 A CHINESE NIGHT 

No ; chaste was certainly not the right word. 
Say, rather, furtive, sinister. You are in Lime- 
house. The peacefulness seems to be that 
attendant upon underhand designs, and the 
twilight is that of people who love it because 
their deeds are evil. 

But now we come to Pennyfields, to the 
thunderous shadows of the great Dock, and 
to that low-lit Causeway that carries such 
subtle tales of flowered islands, white towns, 
green bays, and sunlight like wine. At the 
mouth of Pennyfields is a cluster of Chinks. 
You may see at once that they dislike you. 

But my friend, Sam Tai Ling, will give us 
better welcome, I think ; so we slip into the 
Causeway, with its lousy shop-fronts decorated 
with Chinese signs, among them the Sign of the 
Foreign Drug Open Lamp. At every doorway 
stand groups of the gallant fellows, eyeing 
appreciatively such white girls as pass that 
way . You taste the curious flavour of the place 
— its mixture of camaraderie and brutality, of 
cruelty and pity and tears ; of precocious 
children and wrecked men — and you smell its 
perfume, the week before last. But here is 
the home of Tai Ling, one of the most genial 
souls to be met in a world of cynicism and 
dyspepsia : a lovable character, radiating 
sweetness and a tolerably naughty goodness in 
this narrow street. Not immoral, for to be 
immoral you must first subscribe to some con- 
ventional morality. Tai Ling does not. You 
cannot do wrong until you have first done 
right. Tai Ling has not. He is just non- 



LIMEHOUSE 79 

moral ; and right and wrong are words he 
does not understand. He is in love with life 
and song and wine and the beauty of women. 
The world to him is a pause on a journey, 
where one may take one's idle pleasure while 
others strew the path with mirth and roses. 
He knows only two divisions of people : the 
gay and the stupid. He never turns aside 
from pleasure, or resists an invitation to the 
feast. In fact, by our standards a complete 
rogue, yet the most joyous I have known. 
Were you to visit him and make his acquaint- 
ance, you would thank me for the introduction 
to so charming a character. I never knew a 
man with so seductive a smile. Many a time 
it has driven the virtuously indignant heart out 
of me. An Oriental smile, you know, is not 
an affair of a swift moment. It has a birth 
and a beginning. It awakens, hesitates, 
grows, and at last from the sad chrysalis 
emerges the butterfly. A Chinese smile at the 
full is one of the subtlest expressions of which 
the human face is capable. 

Mr. Sam Tai Ling keeps a restaurant, and, 
some years ago, when my ways were cast about 
West India Dock Road, I knew him well. He 
was an old man then ; he is an old man now : 
the same age, I fancy. Supper with him is 
something to remember — I use the phrase care- 
fully. You will find, after supper, that soda- 
mints and potass -water are more than grateful 
and comforting. 

When we entered he came forward at once, 
and, such was his Celestial courtesy that, 



80 A CHINESE NIGHT 

although we had recently dined, to refuse 
supper was impossible. He supped with us 
himself in the little upper room, lit by gas, 
and decorated with bead curtains and English 
Christmas-number supplements. A few oily 
seamen were manipulating the chop-sticks and 
thrusting food to their mouths with a noise that, 
on a clear night, I should think, could be heard 
as far as Shadwell. When honourable guests 
were seated, honourable guests were served by 
Mr. Tai Ling. There were noodle, shark's 
fins, chop suey, and very much fish and duck, 
and lychee fruits. The first dish consisted of 
something that resembled a Cornish pasty — 
chopped fish and onion and strange meats 
mixed together and heavily spiced, encased in 
a light flour-paste. Then followed a plate of 
noodle, some bitter melon, and finally a pot of 
China tea prepared on the table : real China 
tea, remember, all-same Shan-tung ; not the 
backwash of the name which is served in Picca- 
dilly tea-shops. The tea is carefully prepared 
by one who evidently loves his work, and is 
served in little cups, without milk or sugar, 
but flavoured with chrysanthemum buds. 

As our meal progressed, the cafe began to 
fill ; and the air bubbled with the rush of labial 
talk from the Celestial company. We were 
the only white things there. All the company 
was yellow, with one or two tan-skinned 
girls. 

But we were out for amusement, so, after 
the table hospitality, Sam took us into the 
Causeway. Out of the coloured darkness of 



LIMEHOUSE 81 

Pennyfields came the muffled wail of reed in- 
struments, the heart-cry of the Orient ; noise 
of traffic ; bits of honeyed talk. On every side 
were following feet : the firm, clear step of the 
sailor ; the loud, bullying boots of the tough ; 
the joyful steps that trickle from " The Green 
Man " • and, through all this chorus, most in- 
sistently, the stealthy, stuttering steps of the 
satyr. For your Chink takes his pleasure 
where he finds it ; not, perhaps, the pleasure 
that you would approve, for probably you are 
not of that gracious temperament that accords 
pity and the soft hand to the habits of your 
fellows. Yet so many are the victims of the 
flesh, and for so little while are we here, that 
one can but smile and be kind. Besides, these 
yellow birds come from an Eastern country, 
where they do not read English law or 
bother about such trifles as the age of 
consent. 

Every window, as always, was closely 
shuttered, but between the joints shot jets of 
slim light, and sometimes you could catch the 
chanting of a little sweet song last sung in 
Rangoon or Swatow. One of these songs was 
once translated for me. I should take great 
delight in printing it here, but, alas ! this, too, 
comes from a land where purity crusades are 
unknown. I dare not conjecture what Bays- 
water would do to me if I reproduced it. 

We passed through Pennyfields, through 
clusters of gladly coloured men. Vaguely we 
remembered leaving Henrietta Street, London, 
and dining in Old Compton Street, Paris, a 

6 



82 A CHINESE NIGHT 

few hours ago. And now — was this Paris or 
London or Tuan-tsen or Tai-ping? Pin-points 
of light pricked the mist in every direction. 
A tom-tom moaned somewhere in the far- 
away. 

It was now half-past ten. The public-house 
at the extreme end was becoming more obvious 
and raucous. But, at a sudden black door, 
Sam stopped. Like a figure of a shadowgraph 
he slid through its opening, and we followed. 
Stairs led straight from the street to a base- 
ment chamber— candle-lit, with two exits. I 
had been there before, but to my companions it 
was new. We were in luck. A Dai Nippon 
had berthed a few hours previously, and here 
was its crew, flinging their wages fast over the 
fan-tan tables, or letting it go at Chausa-Bazee 
or Pachassee. 

It was a well-kept establishment where 
agreeable fellows might play a game or so, 
take a shot of opium, or find other varieties 
of Oriental delight. The far glooms were 
struck by low-toned lanterns. Couches lay 
about the walls ; strange men decorated them 
and three young girls in socks, idiotically 
drunk. Small tables were everywhere, each 
table obscured in a fog of yellow faces and 
greasy hair. The huge scorbutic proprietor, 
Ho Ling, swam noiselessly from table to table. 
Seeing that I was not playing, he beckoned to 
me, and led me to a curtained recess in a lost 
corner, and showed me a child posed in the 
manner of Paul Chabas' " Crepuscle." Nice 
man. A lank figure in brown shirting, its 



LIMEHOUSE 83 

fingers curled about the stem of a spent pipe, 
sprawled in another corner. The atmosphere 
churned. The dirt of years, tobacco of many 
growings, opium, betel -nut, bhang, and moist 
flesh allied themselves in one grand assault on 
the nostrils. Perhaps you wonder how they 
manage to keep these places clean. That may 
be answered in two words : they don't. 

On a table beneath one of the lanterns 
squatted a musician with a reed, blinking upon 
the company like a sly cat, and making his 
melody of six repeated notes. 

Suddenly, at one of the tables was a slight 
commotion. A wee slip of a fellow had 
apparently done well at fan -tan, for he slid 
from his corner, and essayed a song— I fancy 
it was meant to be "Robert E. Lee "—in his 
seaman's pidgin. At least, his gestures were 
those of a ragtime comedian, and the tune bore 
some faint resemblance. Or is it that the rag- 
time kings have gone to the antiquities of the 
Orient for their melodies ? But he had not 
gone far before Ho Ling, with the dignity of a 
mandarin, removed him. And the smell being 
a little too strong for us, we followed, and 
strolled to the Asiatics' Home. 

The smell— yes. There is nothing in the 
world like the smell of a Chinatown in a 
Western city. It is a grand battle between a 
variety of odours, but opium prevails. The 
mouth of West India Dock Road is foul with 
it. For you might as well take away a navvy's 
half -pint of beer as deprive a Chink of his 
shot of dope and his gambling -table. Opium 



84 A CHINESE NIGHT 

is forbidden under the L.C.C. regulations, and 
therefore the Chink sleeps at a licensed 
lodging-house and goes elsewhere for his fun. 
Every other house in this quarter is a seamen's 
lodging-house. These hotels have no lifts, and 
no electric light, and no wine -lists. You pay 
threepence a night, and you get the accommo- 
dation you pay for. But then, they are not 
for silk-clad ossifications such as you and me. 
They are for the lusty coloured lads who work 
the world with steam and sail : men whose 
lives lie literally in their great hands, who go 
down to the sea in ships and sometimes have 
questionable business in great waters. 

These India Docks are like no other docks 
in the world. About their gates you find the 
scum of the world's worst countries ; all the 
peoples of the delirious Pacific of whom you 
have read and dreamed — Arab, Hindoo, 
Malayan, Chink, Jap, South Sea Islander — a 
mere catalogue of the names is a romance. 
Here are pace and high adventure ; the tang 
of the East ; fusion of blood and race and 
creed. A degenerate dross it is, but, do you 
know, I cannot say that I don't prefer it to the 
well -spun gold that is flung from the Empire 
on boatrace nights . Place these fellows against 
our blunt backgrounds, under the awful 
mystery of the City's night, and they present 
the finest spectacle that London affords. 

You may see them in their glory at the 
Asiatics' Home, to which we now came. A 
delightful place, this home for destitute 
Orientals ; for it has a veranda and a com- 



LIMEHOUSE 85 

pound, stone beds and caged cubicles, no baths 
and a billiard-table ; and extraordinary pre- 
cautions are taken against indulgence of the 
wicked tastes of its guests. Grouped about 
the giant stove are Asiatics of every country, 
in wonderful toilet creations. A mild-eyed 
Hindoo, lacking a turban, has appropriated a 
bath -towel. A Malay appears in white cotton 
trousers, frock-coat, brown boots, and straw 
hat ; and a stranded Burmese cuts no end of a 
figure in under-vest, steward's jacket, yellow 
trousers, and squash hat. All carry a knife or 
a krees, and all are quite pleasant people, who 
will accept your Salaam and your cigarette. 
Rules and regulations for impossibly good 
conduct hang on the walls in Hindustani, 
Japanese, Swahili, Urdu, and Malayan. All 
food is prepared and cooked by themselves, 
and the slaughter of an animal for the table 
must be witnessed and prayed upon by those 
of their own faith. Out in the compound is 
a skittle-alley, where the boys stroll and play ; 
and costumes, people, and setting have all 
the appearance of the ensemble of a cheap 
revue . 

I suppose one dare not write on Lime- 
house without mentioning opium -rooms. 
Well, if one must, one must, though I have 
nothing of the expected to tell you. 
I have known Limehouse for many years, 
and have smiled many times at the articles 
that appear perennially on the wickedness 
of the place. Its name evokes evil tradi- 
tion in the public mind. There are ingenuous 



86 A CHINESE NIGHT 

people who regard it as dangerous. I have 
already mentioned its sinister atmosphere ; but 
there is an end of it. There is nothing sub- 
stantial. These are the people who will tell 
you of the lurking perils of certain quarters of 
London — how that there are streets down 
which, even in broad daylight, the very police 
do not venture unaccompanied. You may 
believe that, if you choose ; it is simply a tale 
for the soft-minded with a turn for the melo- 
dramatic. There is no such thing as a 
dangerous street in London. I have loafed 
and wandered in every part of London, slums, 
foreign quarters, underground, and docksides, 
and if you must have adventure in London, then 
you will have to make your own. The two 
fiercest streets of the metropolis — Dorset Street 
and Hoxton Street — are as safe for the way- 
farer as Oxford Street ; for women, safer. And 
the manners of Limehouse are certainly a 
lesson to Streatham Hill. 

But we are talking of opium. We left Mr. 
Tai Ling on the steps of the Asiatics' Home, 
and from there we wandered to High Street, 
Poplar, to the house of a gracious gentleman 
from Pi-chi-li, not for opium but for a chat 
with him . For my companions had not smoked 
before, and I did not want two helpless in- 
valids on my hands at midnight. Those 
amazingly thrilling and amazingly ludicrous 
stories of East End opium-rooms are mainly, 
I may say, the work of journalistic specials. 
A journalistic special is a man who writes 
thrillingly on old-fashioned topics on which he 



LIMEHOUSE 87 

is ill-informed. The moment he knows some- 
thing about his subject, he is not allowed to 
write; he ceases to be a special. Also, of 
course, if a man, on sociological investigation, 
puts an initial pipe of opium on top of a brandy 
or so — well, one can understand that even the 
interior of the Bayswater omnibus may be a 
haunt of terror and wonder. Taking a jolt 
of " charidu " in a Limehouse room is about as 
exciting as taking a mixed vermuth at the 
Leicester Lounge. 

The gracious gentleman received us affably. 
Through a curtained recess was the small 
common room, where yellow and black men 
reclined, in a purple dusk, beaded with the 
lights of little lamps. The odour was sickly, 
the air dry. The gentleman wondered whether 
we would have a room. No, we wouldn't ; but 
I bought cigarettes, and we went upstairs to 
the little dirty bedrooms. The bed is but a 
mattress with a pillow. There, if you are a 
dope -fiend, you may have your pipe and lamp, 
very cosy, and you may lock the door, and 
the room is yours until you have finished. One 
has read, in periodicals, of the well-to-do 
people from the western end, who hire rooms 
here and come down, from time to time, for 
an orgy. That is another story for the 
nursery. White people dp visit the rooms, of 
course, but they are chiefly the white seamen 
of the locality ; and, in case you may ever 
feel tempted to visit any of the establishments 
displaying the Sign of the Open Lam'p, I may 
tell you that your first experiment will result 



88 A CHINESE NIGHT 

in violent nausea, something akin to the effect 
of the cigar you smoked when you were twelve, 
but heightened to the nth power. Opium 
does nasty things to the yellow man ; it does 
nastier tilings to the white man. Not only 
does it wreck the body, but it engenders and 
inflames those curious vices to which allusion 
has been made elsewhere. If you do not 
believe me, then you may accept the wisdom of 
an unknown Formosan, who, three hundred 
years ago, published a tract, telling of the 
effects of the Open Lamp on the white man. 
They are, in a word, parallel with the effects 
of whisky on the Asiatic. Listen : — 

"The opium is boiled in a copper pan. The pipe is in appear- 
ance like a short club. Depraved young men, without any fixed 
occupation, meet together by night and smoke ; and it soon 
becomes a habit. Fruit and sweetmeats are provided for the 
sailors, and no charge is made for the first time, in order to tempt 
them. After a while they cannot stay away, and will forfeit all 
their property so as to buy the drug. Soon they find themselves 
beyond cure. If they omit smoking for a day, their faces become 
shrivelled, their lips stand open, and they seem ready to die. 
Another smoke restores vitality, but in three years they all 
die." 

So now you know. The philanthropic 
foreigner published his warning in 1622. In 
1 9 1 5 . . . well, walk down Pennyfields and 
exercise your nose, and calculate how much 
opium is being smoked in London to-day. 

Nobody troubles very much about China- 
town, except the authorities, and their inter- 
ference is but perfunctory. The yellow men, 
after all, are, as Prologue to " Pagliacci " 



LIMEHOUSE 89 

observes, but men like you, for joy or sorrow, the 
same broad heaven above them, the same wide 
world before them. They are but men like 
you, though the sanitary officials may doubt it. 
They will sleep six and seven in one dirty bed, 
and no law of London can change their ways. 
Anyway, they are peaceful, agreeable people, 
who ask nothing but to be allowed to go about 
their business and to be happy in their own 
way. They are shy birds, and detest being 
looked at, or talked to, or photographed, or 
written about. They don't want white men 
in their restaurants, or nosing about their 
places. They carry this love of secrecy to 
strange lengths. Not so long ago a press 
photographer set out boldly to get pictures 
of Chinatown. He marched to the mouth of 
Limehouse Causeway, through which, in the 
customary light of grey and rose, many amiable 
creatures were gliding, levelled his nice new 
Kodak, and got — an excellent picture of the 
Causeway after the earthquake. The entire 
street in his plate was deserted. Every Chink 
in that spot had scuttled like a rabbit to its 
burrow. 

Certain impressionable people — Cook's 
tourists and Civil Servants — return from the 
East mumbling vague catchwords — mystic, elu- 
sive, subtle, haunting, alluring. These London 
Chinese are neither subtle nor mystic. They 
are mostly materialist and straightforward ; 
and, once you can gain their confidence, you 
will find yourself wonderfully at home. But 
it has to be gained, for, as I have said, they 



90 A CHINESE NIGHT 

are shy, and were you to try to join a game 
of cards on a short acquaintance . . . well, it 
would be easier to drop in for a cigarette with 
King George. To get into a Grosvenor Square 
mansion on a ball night is a comparatively 
easy matter : swank and an evening suit will 
do it ; nothing very exclusive about those 
people. But the people of Limehouse, and, 
indeed, of any slum or foreign quarter, are ex- 
clusive ; and to get into a Poplar dope-house 
on bargain night demands the exercise of more 
Oriental ingenuity than most of us possess. 

Only at the mid-January festival do they 
forget themselves and come out of their shells. 
Then things happen. The West India Dock 
Road is whipped to life. The windows shake 
with flowers, the roofs with flags. Lanterns are 
looped from house to house, and the slow 
frenzy of Oriental carnival begins. In the 
morning there is solemn procession, with joss- 
sticks, to the cemetery, where prayers are held 
over the graves of departed compatriots, and 
lamentations are carried out in native fashion, 
with sweet cakes, whisky, and song and 
gesture. In the evening — ah ! — dancing in the 
halls with the white girls. Glamorous January 
evening . . . yellow men with much money 
to spend . . . beribboned girls, gay, flaunt- 
ing, and fond of curious kisses . . . lighted 
lanterns swinging lithely on their strings . . . 
noise, bustle, and laughter of the cafes . . . 
all these things light this little bit of London 
with an alluring Eastern flame. 

There was a time, years ago, when the East 



LIMEHOUSE 91 

End was the East End— a land apart, with 
laws and customs of its own, cut off from 
civilization, and having no common ground 
with Piccadilly. But the motor-'bus has 
changed all that. It has so linked things and 
places that all individual character has been 
swamped in a universal chaos, and there is 
now neither East nor West. All lost nooks 
of London have been dug out and forced into 
the traffic line, and boundaries are things 
which exist to-day only in the mind of the 
borough councillor. Hyde Park stretches to 
Shadwell, Hampstead to Albert Docks. Soho 
is vieux jeu. Little Italy is exploded. The 
Russian and Jewish quarters are growing stale 
and commercial, and the London Docks are 
a region whose chief features are Cockney 
warehouse clerks. This corner of Limehouse 
alone remains defiantly its Oriental self, no 
part of London ; and I trust that it may never 
become popular, for then there will be no spot 
to which one may escape from the banalities 
of the daily day. 

But as we stood in the little bedroom of 
the gentleman from Pi-chi-li the clock above 
Millwall Docks shot twelve crashing notes 
along the night. The gentleman thrust a 
moon face through the dusky doorway to 
inquire if I had changed my mind. Would 
myself and honourable companions smoke, 
after all? We declined, but he assured me 
that we should meet again at Tai -Ling's cafe, 
and perhaps hospitality . . . 

So we tumbled down the crazy stairs, 



92 A CHINESE NIGHT 

through the room from which the Chinks were 
fast melting, and into the midnight glitter of 
the endless East India Dock Road. We 
passed through streets of dark melancholy, 
through labyrinthine passages where the gas- 
jets spluttered asthmatically, under weeping 
railway arches, and at last were free of the 
quarter where the cold fatalism of the East 
combats the wistful dubiety of the West. But 
the atmosphere, physical and moral, remained 
with us. Not that the yellow men are to 
blame for this atmosphere. The evil of the 
place is rather that of Londoners, and the 
bitter nightmare spirit of the place is 
rather of them than of Asia. I said 
that there was little wickedness in China- 
town, but one wickedness there is, which is 
never spoken of in published articles ; opium 
seems the only point that strangers can fasten 
on. Even if this wickedness were known, I 
doubt if it would be mentioned. It con- 
cerns . . . But I had better not. 

We looked back at Barking Road, where 
it dips and rises with a sweep as lovely as 
a flying bird's, and on the bashful little streets, 
whose lights chime on the darkness like the 
rounding of a verse. Strange streets they 
are, where beauty is unknown and love but 
a grisly phantom ; streets peopled, at this 
hour, with loose-lipped and uncomely girls— 
mostly the fruit of a yellow-and-white union 
—and with other things not good to be talked 
of. I was philosophizing to my friend about 
these things, and he was rhapsodizing to me 



LIMEHOUSE 93 

about the stretch of lamplights, when a late 
'bus for the Bank swept along. We took a 
flying mount that shook the reek of Limehouse 
from our clothes and its nastiness from our 
minds, and twenty minutes later we were 
taking a final coffee at the " Monico." 



A DOMESTIC NIGHT 

KENSINGTON AND CLAPHAM COMMON 



THE LA MP LIT LIOUR 

Dusk — and the lights of home 

Smile through the rain : 
A thousand smiles for those that come 

Homeward again. 

What though the night be drear 

With gloom and cold, 
So that there be one voice to hear, 

One hand to hold? 

Here, by the winter fire, 

Life is our own. 
, Here, out of murk and mire, 

Here is our throne. 

Then let the wild world throng 

To pomp and power j 
And let us fill with love and song 

The lamplit hour. 



A DOMESTIC NIGHT 

kensington and clapham common 

Good Lord ! 

Pardon my explosiveness, but the expres- 
sion escaped me on looking at the head of 
this chapter. For I do not like Kensington. 
I think it as well to say so at once, and to 
ask you, if the chapter bores you, to be kind 
enough to remember that it has bored me still 
more. I simply haven't a good word to say 
for the place. Not that I haven't tried. I 
have lain awake at nights, with breast-knock - 
ings and heart -sear chings, trying to think of 
nice things about Kensington. But it is use- 
less ; there aren't any. London has many 
terribly banal places, but Kensington is, I 
think, first, with, perhaps, Bayswater and 
Streatham very hot for places. 

There it is— immovable, self-sufficient, and 
as stodgily effective as the novels of Mrs. 
Humphry Ward. 

It holds all the most disagreeable things 
—everything that is flat, brackish, unprofitable, 
and self -proud. I have a grim fancy that, 
years ago, some genius of humour, tired of 
administering aperients to the intellectually 

7 97 



98 A DOMESTIC NIGHT 

costive, must have amused himself by wander- 
ing round London and collecting all that he 
could find most alkaloid. Then, gathering his 
treasures together, he dumped the whole lot 
down, and gave its resting-place the jangling 
name of Kensington. Certainly they are all 
there— the Boltons, Cromwell Road, Brompton 
Oratory, Imperial Institute, Earl's Court, 
Victoria and Albert Museum, Albert Hall, 
Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens, with 
their unspeakable melancholy, their nurse- 
maids and their sedate children (most pathetic 
sight in the world), luckless diplomats, and 
successful men. The very names are touched 
with the temper of last night's soda-water. 

It always sets a match to the oil of rebellion 
that is in me. It makes me want to do out- 
rageous things. A little friend of mine, a 
twelve-year-old schoolgirl, expressed my mood 
admirably when, speaking of church -going, she 
said : " I hate it. Always makes me want to 
lie down and kick and yell." The air is rank 
with the bitterness of the superannuated virgin. 
There are no girls and no women ; they are 
all young ladies. You may see them, in well- 
cut clothes and with mellifluous accents, always 
" correct," waiting at pit doors for matinees 
(for they have the saving vice of parsimony) ; 
the product, all of them, of the enervating 
atmosphere of the highest-class boarding- 
schools and colleges, where the philosophies 
of Sappho are seldom preached and frequently 
practised. 

And yet . . . you know ... it succeeds, 



KENSINGTON AND CLAPHAM COMMON 99 

it succeeds ; and there was never a philosopher 
in the world who didn't envy Success, what- 
ever, publicly, he may have said about it. It 
always will succeed. When all the youth and 
art and loveliness of the world are passed 
away Cromwell Road and The Boltons will go 
on, battling, with their vulgar, unchallenge- 
able feet, every one of the finer things of life. 
Ridicule cannot kill it, for Ridicule presup- 
poses a sense of proportion in the thing 
ridiculed. Pleading cannot melt it. There 
are no weapons that can conquer it. Nothing 
can cast it down, for it is built on the strongest 
foundation in the world— Stupidity, whose other 
names are Money and Social Position. It 
has no tears and no laughter. Its laughter 
is but the rattle of cracked crockery ; its tears 
are but the hollow note of a voice speaking 
without a mind. 

There's hardly a street in it that isn't trite. 
There's hardly a person in it that isn't a plati- 
tude. It is as sticky as a Viennese waltz. It 
is the home of the very tamest respectability 
—the respectability of those who have been 
through the Divorce Court. You are conscious 
everywhere of an atmosphere of discontent, 
which you find expressed in the demeanour of 
its people— men, women, and children. This 
discontent is not so much a wanting something. 
It is infinitely more tragic : it is a wanting 
to want something. 

And yet ... it is unassailable. It is 
Kensington. And crowds of dear souls in 
Streatham and Bayswater and Vauxhall and 



ioo A DOMESTIC NIGHT 

the provinces are building their dreams on the 
day when they may move to its flat streets, 
and be at home on second Thursdays to the 
spiritually egg-bound. This very laudable and 
very vulgar quality of ambition perfumes every 
house. While Streatham yearns to address its 
letters from Queen's Gate, so does Kensington 
yearn for the ampler ether of Belgravia or 
Mayf air . 

It is a region of stiff, straight barracks of 
houses that frown upon those whose ground- 
rent is a little less than is right and proper. 
I once dined in one of these chilly places, but 
only once. Note that I did not have dinner. 
I dined. We did not go into the dining-room. 
We paraded there in provincial pomp, down- 
stairs and along passages, to the heavy apart- 
ment. We walked consciously, so that one 
looked apprehensively for the Press -camera 
man. I was paired with a pale girl from 
Bayswater. Her complexion was pale. Her 
hair was pale. Her mind was pale. She 
was a typical Bayswaterlily. She asked 
me if I had been at the Baroness's on 
Tuesday. 

The dinner was poor. The claret was sharp, 
like the red ink which I drank at school for 
a wager. There were no liqueurs, and the 
port was only as old as last week's news- 
paper. We stood up stiffly when the women 
left. There were only cigars and Virginia 
cigarettes (which I loathe) for the men. My 
host was stodgy and fish-faced. He had 
the air of having tried hard to model himself 



KENSINGTON AND CLAPHAM COMMON 101 

on " The Eine Old English Gentleman." He 
did the table manner fairly well, but he over- 
did the gallantry. He overdid the attentive 
husband, and the pleasant father, and the man 
of responsibilities and property. Sometimes 
he essayed jocularity, and Kensington or Bays- 
water being funny rather suggests an elephant 
trying to dance a gavotte. 

The drawing-room was as stiff as the dining- 
room, if not more so. Everywhere was dis- 
played that nauseating quality, Good Taste. 
There were one or two well -chosen etchings. 
The piano was by Buhlmann, and was placed 
effectively. The decorative scheme was quietly 
fashionable. Nowhere, indeed, in the house 
did individuality outrage accepted convention ; 
not a trace of personal feeling or idiosyncrasy 
could be found. Even the grouping around 
the fire was arranged, with host in the centre, 
hostess in the side arm-chair, and the young 
folk scattered. The hostess, I am sure, was 
a dear, if she had Dared, if she had permitted 
character to triumph over environment. 

Solicitous inquiries were made whether Ethel 
had brought her music. She had. She would 
ring for it. 

She sang, rather lamely, " My Dreams," 
" Little White Flower," and " Sing me to 
Sleep." Her voice was passable. Like her 
manners, it was, one felt, part of the atmo- 
sphere. I don't doubt that considerable sums 
of money had been spent on its manufacture. 
Her friend told me that if she had had to 
work for her living she might have been quite 



102 A DOMESTIC NIGHT 

a decent singer ; only, of course, I knew what 
girls were nowadays. . . . 

After a rather pointless pianoforte solo by 
one of the elder ladies, some one asked Ethel 
if she would sing again, and Ethel said she 
would, after the second cup of coffee. I left 
after the second cup of coffee. 

Lord, how I longed for a spark of passion 
—for anything selfless, violent, destructive ! 
But, no. It was Kensington, and my deter- 
minedly genial host, a Permanent Under- 
Something-or-Other in Whitehall, was Ken- 
sington, too, and meant every one else to be 
Kensington. The company tried to be agree- 
able in its own raw little way, but ... It 
seemed, literally, that they dared not display 
emotion. There was a quality of fear in their 
restraint. They dared only that true mark of 
the spiritually underbred : they were openly 
ashamed of their own passions. Everywhere 
in the county classes and in Bayswater and 
Kensington you find this spiritual pudibonderie. 
A girl will greet her lover in the drawing- 
room, and her ignoble little soul will be shame- 
faced if he dares to show that he is pleased 
to see her. That, too, is part of her manu- 
factured atmosphere. I think the man who 
decided that restraint of emotion was a mark 
of gentility must have been having a private 
joke with the English character. 

No ; the more I think about it, the less I 
feel like writing about a night in Kensing- 
ton. I think I would much rather write about 
American drinks or some jolly nonsense of 



KENSINGTON AND CLAPHAM COMMON 103 

that sort. Of course, I don't mean that all 
Kensington nights are dull. They are not. 
I have had nights in Kensington which . . . 
But I hardly think they can be regarded as 
typical nights. In fact, I am almost sure they 
were not, because neighbours wrote letters to 
my hosts on more than one occasion, pointing 
this out to them. 

So I think I will give the scabrous gentility 
of Kensington a miss. As I have said three 
times already, I don't like its domesticity a 
bit ; I don't think it's English, and it is not 
my idea of the domestic. As the prevailing 
" note " of London is its domesticity, and its 
homes, I must show you something typical of 
the seven million that encompass us. But 
where to start amid so many types ? We 
have already fallen at the first hurdle, Ken- 
sington, the solid, well-to-do ; then we have 
the loftier, rarefied domesticity of Berkeley 
Square, which is none the less sweet because 
it expresses itself, perhaps, one evening in 
seven, the other six being given up to Enter- 
taining more or less welcome guests ; then 
we have the really snug domesticity of Tufnell 
Park, of Surbiton, of Camberwell, of Black- 
heath . 

Let us compromise on Clapham Common. 
At six o'clock every evening London Bridge 
vomits its stream of tired workers, hurrying 
home, most of them living at Clapham 
Common or similar places with a different 
name. Some of them walk home along those 
straggling streets, which, after many years, 



104 A DOMESTIC NIGHT 

reach the near suburbs ; some of them go 
by car or 'bus. All are weary. All are gay. 
They are Going Home. 

I think it was Mr. Mark Sheridan who was 
singing, some few years back, that " All the 
girls are lover-ly by the seaside ! " I do not 
know the poet responsible for this sentiment, 
but I should like to take him to any of the 
London bridges and let him watch the crowd 
coming home at six o'clock. He was all 
wrong, anyway. The girls are not lovely by 
the seaside. If there is one place where the 
sweetest girl is decidedly plain and ill -kempt 
it is at the seaside. His song should read, 
" All the girls are lover-ly up in London ! " 
And they are, whether they be chorus-girls, 
typists, shop-girls, Reuter's messenger girls, 
modistes, or factory girls. Do you know those 
delightful London children, the tailors' collec- 
tors, who " fetch it and bring it home " ? Their 
job is to take out the work from the big 
tailoring establishments to the dozens and 
dozens of home workers, and to collect it 
from them at the appointed time. You may 
easily recognize them by the large black-lining 
bundles which they carry so deftly under either 
arm. Mostly they are dear little girls of about 
fourteen, in short frocks, and mostly they are 
pretty. They have a casual manner, and they 
smile very winningly. Often their little feet 
tramp twelve and fourteen miles a day de- 
livering and collecting ; often they are sworn 
at by the foreman for being late ; often they 
are very unhappy, and hardly ever do they 



KENSINGTON AND CLAPHAM COMMON 105 

get more than seven -and-sixpence a week. But 
they always smile : a little timidly, you know, 
because they are so young and London is so 
full of perils ; yea, though they work harder 
than any other sweated labourer— they smile. 

And over the bridges they come at night- 
fall, if they are not doing overtime, chatter- 
ing and smiling, each with a Dorothy -bag, or 
imitation leather dispatch-case, each with a 
paper novelette, and so to the clear spaces 
of Clapham Common, now glittering with the 
lights of home, and holding in its midst a 
precious jewel— the sparked windows of the 
Windmill Inn . 

At home, tea is ready set for them and their 
brothers . Brothers are probably in warehouses 
or offices, somewhere in the brutal City ; for 
every member of the suburban family earns 
something ; they all contribute their little bit 
to help " keep the home going." Tea is set 
in the kitchen, or living-room, and Mother sits 
there by the fire, awaiting the return of her 
brood, and reading, for the forty-fourth time, 
East Lynne . Acacia Grove is a narrow street 
of small houses, but each house is pridefully 
held by its owners, and fierce competition, 
in the matter of front gardens, is waged 
during spring and summer. Now it is 
a regiment of soft lights, each carrying 
its message of cheer and promises of 
tea, arm-chair, and slippered ease. The 
fragrance of the meal is already on the air, 
and through the darling twilight comes the 
muffin-man and the cheery tinkle of his bell 



106 A DOMESTIC NIGHT 

— one of the last of a once great army of 
itinerant feeders of London. Gaslight and 
firelight leap on the spread table, glinting 
against cups and saucers and spoons, and light- 
ing, with sudden spurts, the outer gloom. A 
sweet warmth fills the room — the restful home- 
liness imparted by a careful, but not too care- 
ful, woman. The wall-paper is flaring, but 
very clean. The pictures are flaring, but 
framed with honest love. The dresser holds, 
not only crockery but also items of decoration : 
some carved candlesticks, some photographs 
in gilt frames, an ornament with a nodding 
head, kept there because it always amuses 
young Emmie's baby when she calls. Every- 
where pride of home is apparent. . . . 

When the lady hears a familiar step, she 
lays East Lynne aside, pokes up the fire, 
places a plate in the fender, and a kipper over 
the griddle, where it sizzles merrily ; for it is 
wasteful to use the gas grill when you have 
a fire going. Then the boys come clumping in, 
or the girls come tripping in, and Mother 
attends them while she listens to recitals of 
the day's doings in the City. Sometimes the 
youngsters are allowed to postpone their tea 
until the big ones come home ; and then they 
take a Scramble Tea on the rug before the 
fire. You take a Scramble Tea by turning 
saucers and plates upside down, and placing 
the butter in the sugar-basin, the sugar on the 
bread-board, and the bread, so far as possible, 
in the sugar-basin, and the milk in the slop- 
basin. Taken in this way, your food acquires 



KENSINGTON AND CLAPHAM COMMON 107 

a new and piquant flavour, and stimulates a 
flagging appetite. Or they lounge against the 
table, and help themselves to sly dips in the 
jam with the handle of a teaspoon, or make 
predatory assaults on the sugar-basin. 

After tea, the bright boys wash, clean 
their boots, and change into their " second- 
best " attire, and stroll forth, either to a picture 
palace or to the second house of the Balham 
Hippodrome ; perchance, if the gods be 
favourable, to an assignation on South Side 
Clapham Common ; sometimes to saunter, in 
company with others, up and down that parade 
until they " click " with one of the " birds." 
The girls are out on much the same pro- 
gramme. They, too, promenade until they 
" click " with some one, and are escorted to 
picture palace or hall or chocolate shop. 
Usually, it is a picture palace, for, in Acacia 
Grove, mothers are very strict as to the hours 
at which their young daughters shall be in. 
Half-past ten is the general rule, with an 
extension on certain auspicious occasions. 

It is a great game, this " clicking " ; with 
very nice rules. However seasoned you may 
be, there are always, in certain districts, pitfalls 
for the unwary. The Clapham manner is 
sharply distinct from the Blackheath manner, 
as the Kilburn manner is distinct from that of 
Leyton. Probably you have played it yourself, 
if not about the suburbs, then at the seaside ; 
and you know how easy it is to go wrong, to 
mistake your quarry, or to use the wrong code 
words or signals. On Clapham Common, the 



io8 A DOMESTIC NIGHT 

monkey's parade is South Side ; and the game 
is begun by strolling from " The Plough " to 
Nightingale Lane. As you pass the likely 
girls, you glance and, if not rebuffed, you grin. 
But you do not stop ; you walk on. At the 
second passing, you smile again, and touch 
their hands in passing, or cry over your 
shoulder some current witticism, such as : 
" 'Snice night, Ethel ! " or " I should shay 
sho ! " 

And Ethel and Lucy will swing round, 
challengingly, with scraping feet, and cry 
" Oooh ! " You linger at the corner, still look- 
ing back, and you see that they, too, are 
looking back. Ethel asks Lucy : " Shall we? " 
and Lucy says : " Oo — I d'no," and by that 
time you have returned and stopped. You 
say : " Isn't it cold? " or " Isn't it hot? " And 
then : " Where are you off to in such a hurry ? " 

"Who— me? " 

" Yes — you. Saucy ! " 

"Oo! I d'no." 

" Well — shall we stroll 'cross the Common ? " 

" I don' mind." 

And so, imperceptibly, you and your friend 
move in the same direction as Ethel and 
Lucy. You have " clicked." You have " got 
off." Your arm seeks hers, and soon you leave 
the Parade for the soft furze -bushes of the 
Common. I repeat — a great game. 

In the light evenings they sometimes take 
Mother for a 'bus ride to Kingston or Mitcham, 
or Uncle George may drop in and talk with 
them about the garden. And while the elders 



KENSINGTON AND CLAPHAM COMMON 109 

talk gardens, the kiddies play in the passage 
at sliding down the banisters. Having regard 
to its value in soothing the nerves and stimu- 
lating the liver, and to the fact that it is an 
indoor pastime within the reach of high and 
low, I never understand why banister-sliding 
has not become more popular. I should 
imagine that it would be an uproariously 
successful innovation at any smart country 
house, during the long evenings, and the first 
hostess who has the courage to introduce it 
will undoubtedly reap her reward. . . . 

There are, of course, other domesticities 
around Clapham Common on a slightly higher 
scale ; for there are roads and roads of uniform 
houses at rents of £60 and £70 per annum, 
and here, too, sweetness and ( pardon the word) 
Englishness spread their lambent lustre. 

Here they do not come home to tea ; they 
come home to dinner. Dinner is usually the 
simple affair that you get at Simpson's : a 
little soup followed by a joint and vegetables, 
and a sweet of some sort. Beer is usually 
drunk, though they do rise to wine on occasion. 
Here, too, they have a real dining-room, very 
small, but still ... a dining-room. They 
keep a maid, trim and smiling. And after 
dinner you go into the drawing-room. The 
drawing-room is a snug little concern, 
decorated in a commonplace way, but usually 
a corner where you can be at ease. The 
pictures are mostly of the culture of yesterday 
—Watts, Rossetti, a Whistler or so ; perhaps, 
courageously, a Monet reproduction. The 



no A DOMESTIC NIGHT 

occasional tables bear slim volumes of slim 
verse, and a novel from Mudie's. There is 
one of those ubiquitous fumed-oak bookcases. 
They go in a little for statuettes, of a kind. 
There is no attempt at heavy lavishness, nor is 
there any attempt at breaking away from 
tradition. The piano is open. The music on 
the stand is " Little Grey Home in the West " ; 
it is smothering Tchaikowsky's " Chant sans 
Paroles." There are several volumes of music 
— suspiciously new — Chopin's Nocturnes, 
Mozart's Sonaten, Schubert's Songs. 

After dinner, the children climb all over you, 
and upset your coffee, and burn themselves on 
your cigarette. Then Mother asks the rumple- 
haired baby, eight years old, to recite to the 
guest, and she declines. So Mother goes to 
the piano, and insists that she shall sing. To 
this she consents, so long as she may turn her 
back on her audience. So she stands, her little 
legs looking so pathetic in socks, by her 
mother, and sings, very prettily, " Sweet and 
Low " and that delicate thing of Thomas 
Dekker's — " Golden Slumbers " — with its lovely 
seventeenth -century melody, full of the grace- 
ful sad-gaiety of past things, and of a pathos 
the more piercing because at first unsuspected ; 
beauty and sorrow crystallized in a few simple 
chords. 

Then baby goes in care of the maid to bed, 
and Mother and Father and Helen, who is 
twelve years old, go to the pictures at the 
Palladium near Balham Station. There, for 
sixpence, they have an entertainment which is 



KENSINGTON AND CLAPHAM COMMON in 

quite satisfying to their modest temperaments 
and one, withal, which is quite suitable to Miss 
Twelve Years Old ; for Father and Mother are 
Proper People, and would not like to take their 
treasure to the sullying atmosphere of even 
a suburban music-hall. 

So they spend a couple of hours with the 
pictures, listening to an orchestra of a piano, a 
violin, and a 'cello, which plays even indifferent 
music really well. And they roar over the 
facial extravagances of Ford Sterling and his 
friends Fatty and Mabel ; they applaud, and 
Miss Twelve Years Old secretly admires, the 
airy adventures of the debonair Max Linder — 
she thinks he is a dear, only she daren't tell 
Mother and Father so, or they would be startled. 
And then there is Bunny — always there is 
Bunny. Personally, I loathe the cinemato- 
graph. It is, I think, the most tedious, the 
most banal form of entertainment that was ever 
flung at a foolish public. The Punch and Judy 
show is sweetness and light by comparison. 
It is the mechanical nature of the affair that 
so depresses me. It may be clever ; I have no 
doubt it is. But I would rather see the worst 
music-hall show that was ever put up than 
the best picture-play that was ever filmed. The 
darkness, the silence, the buzz of the machine, 
and the insignificant processions of shadows on 
a sheet are about the last thing I should ever 
describe by the word Entertainment. I would 
as soon sit for two hours in a Baptist Chapel. 
But, fortunately, there is always Bunny ; or at 
least Bunny's face. Bunny's face is . . . But 



ii2 A DOMESTIC NIGHT 

no. There is no use in attempting to describe 
that face. There is only itself with which to 
compare it. There has never been anything 
like it in the theatrical world. It is colossal. 
The first essential for bioscope work is to 
possess a face. Not merely a face, but a 
FACE. And Bunny has a FACE of FACES. 
You probably know it ; so I need say no more. 
If you don't, then make acquaintance with it. 

After the pictures, they go home, and Miss 
Twelve goes to bed, while Mother and Father 
sit up awhile. Father has a nightcap, perhaps, 
and Mother gives him a little music. She 
doesn't pretend to play, she will tell her guests ; 
she just amuses herself. Often they have a 
friend or two in for dinner and a little music, 
or music and a little dinner. Or sometimes 
they visit other friends in an exchange of hospi- 
talities, or book seats for a theatre, or for 
the Coliseum, and perhaps dine in town at 
Gatti's or Maxim's, and feel very gay. Mother 
seizes the opportunity to air her evening frock, 
and father dresses, too, and they have a taxi 
to town and a taxi home. 

Then, one by one, the lights in their Avenue 
disappear ; the warm windows close their tired 
eyes ; and in the soft silence of the London 
night they ascend, hand in hand, to their 
comfortable little bedroom ; and it is all very 
sweet and sacramental. . . . 



A LONELY NIGHT 
KINGSLAND ROAD 



A LONELY NIGHT 

In the tinted dayspring of a London alley, 

Where the dappled tnoonlight cools the sunburnt lane, 
Deep in the flare and the coloured noise of suburbs, 

Long have I sought you in shade and shine and rain ! 
Through dusky byways, rent with dancing naphthas, 

Through the trafficked highways, where streets and streets collide, 
Through the evil twilight, the night 's ghast silence, 

Long have I wandered, and wondered where you hide. 

Young lip to young lip does another meet you ? 

Has a lonely traveller, when day was stark and long, 
Toiling ever slower to the grey road's ending, 

Reached a sudden summer of sun and flower and song ? 
Has he seen in you the worlds one yearning, 

All the season's message, all the heavens' play? 
Has he read in you the riddle of our living? 

Have you to another been the dark's one ray ? 

Well, if one has held you, and, holding you, beheld you 

Shining down upon him like a single star; 
If Love to Love leans, even as the fune sky, 

Laughing down to earth, leans strangely close and far; 
Has he seen the moonlight mirrored in the bloomy, 

Softly-breathing gloom of your dear dark hair ; 
And seeing it, has worshipped and cried again for heaven ? 

Then am I joyful for a fire-kissed prayer .' 



A LONELY NIGHT 

KINGSLAND ROAD 

Kingsland Road is one of the few districts of 
London of which I can say, definitely, that I 
loathe it. I hate to say this about any part 
of London, but Kingsland Road is Memories 
. . . nothing sentimental, but Memories of 
hardship, the bitterest of Memories. It is a 
bleak patch in my life ; even now the sight 
of its yellow-starred length, as cruelly straight 
as a sword, sends a shudder of chill foreboding 
down my back. It is, like Barnsbury, one of 
the lost places of London, and I have met many 
people who do not believe in it. " Oh yes," 
they say, " I knew that 'buses went there ; 
but I never knew there really was such a 
place." 

Many miles I have tramped and retramped 
on its pavements, filled with a brooding bitter- 
ness which is no part of seventeen. Those were 
the days of my youth, and, looking back, I 
realize that something, indeed, a great deal, 
was missing. Youth, of course, in the abstract, 
is regarded as a kingship, a time of dreams, 
potentialities, with new things waiting for dis- 
covery at every corner. Poets talk of it as 

"5 



n6 A LONELY NIGHT 

some kind of magic, something that knows no 
barriers, that whistles through the world's dull 
streets a charmed tune that sets lame limbs 
pulsing afresh. Nothing of the kind. Its only 
claim is that it is the starting-point. Only once 
do we make a friend — our first. Only once do 
we succeed — and that is when we take our 
first prize at school. All others are but 
empty echoes of tunes that only once were 
played. 

There are fatuous folk who, having become 
successful and lost their digestions, look back 
on their far youth, and talk, saying that their 
early days, despite miseries and hardships, were 
really, now they regard them dispassionately, 
the happiest of their lives. That is a lie. And 
everybody, even he who says it, secretly knows 
it to be a lie. Youth is not glorious ; it is 
shamefaced. It is a time of self-searching 
and self -exacerbation. It is a horrible experi- 
ence which everybody is glad to forget, and 
which nobody ever wants to repeat. It knows 
no zest. It is a time of spiritual unrest, a 
chafing of the soul. Youth is cruel, troubled, 
sensitive to futilities. Only childhood and 
middle-age can be light-hearted about life : 
childhood because it doesn't understand, 
middle -age because it does. 

And a youth of poverty is, literally, hell. 
There is a canting phrase in England to the 
effect that poverty is nothing to be ashamed 
of. Yet if there is one country in the world 
where poverty is a thing to be superlatively 
ashamed of, that country is England. There 



KINGSLAND ROAD 117 

never was an Englishman who wasn't ashamed 
of being poor. I have myself had a youth 
of hardship and battle : a youth in which I 
invaded the delectable countries of 1 Literature 
and Music, and lived sometimes ecstatically on 
a plane many degrees above everyday life, and 
— was hungry. Now, looking back, when I 
have, at any rate, enough to live upon and 
can procure anything I want within reason ; 
though I am no longer enthusiastic about Art 
or Music or Letters, and have lost the sharp 
palate I had for these things ; yet, looking 
back, I know that those were utterly miserable 
days, and that right now I am having the 
happiest time of my life. For, though I don't 
very much want books and opera and etchings 
and wines and liqueurs — still, if I want them 
I can have them at any moment. And that 
sense of security is worth more than a thousand 
of the temperamental ecstasies and agonies that 
are the appanage of hard -up Youth. 

At that time, fired by a small journalistic 
success, I insulted the senior partner of the 
City firm which employed me at a wicked 
wage, and took my departure. Things went 
well, for a time, and then went ill. There 
were feverish paradings of Fleet Street, when 
I turned out vivid paragraphs for the London 
Letter of a Northern daily, receiving half a 
crown apiece. They were wonderful para- 
graphs. Things seemed to happen in London 
every day unknown to other newspapers ; and 
in the service of that journal I was, by the look 
of it, like Sir Boyle Roche's bird, in five places 



n8 A LONELY NIGHT 

at once. But that stopped, and for some time 
I drifted, in a sort of mental and physical 
stupor, all about highways and byways. I saw 
naked life in big chunks. I dined in Elaga- 
balian luxury at Lockhart's on a small ditto 
and two thick 'uns, and a marine. I took mid- 
night walks under moons which — pardon the 
decadent adjectives — were pallid and passion- 
ate. I am sure they were at that time : all 
moons were. Then, the lightness of my 
stomach would rise to the head, so that I 
walked on air, and brilliance played from me 
like sparks from a cat's back. I could have 
written wonderful stuff then — had I the mind. 
I wandered and wandered . . . and that is 
about all I remember. Bits of it come back 
to me at times, though. . . . 

I remember, finally, sloughing through 
Bishopsgate into Norton Folgate, when I was 
down to fifteen -and-sixpence. In Norton 
Folgate I found a timid cocoa-room, and, care- 
less of the future, I entered and gorged. 
Sausages . . . mashed . . . bread . . . toma- 
toes . . . pints of hot tea. . . . Too, I found 
sage wisdom in the counter-boy. He had been 
through it. We put the matter into committee, 
and it was discussed from every possible point 
of view. I learnt that I could get a room for 
next to nothing round about there, and that 
there was nothing like studying the " Sits. 
Vacant " in the papers at the Library ; or, if 
there was anything like it, it was trusting to 
your luck. No sense in getting the bleeding 
pip. As he was eighteen and I was seven- 



KINGSLAND ROAD 119 

teen, I took his counsel to heart, and, fired with 
a repletion of sausage and potato, I stalked 
lodgings through the forests of Kingsland 
Road and Cambridge Road. In the greasy, 
strewn highway, where once the Autonomic 
Club had its home, I struck Cudgett Street— a 
narrow, pale cul-de-sac, containing fifty dilapi- 
dated cottages ; and in the window of the first 
a soiled card : " One Room to Let." 

The doorstep, flush with the pavement, was 
crumbling. The door had narrowly escaped 
annihilation by fire ; but the curtains in the 
front-room window were nearly white. Two 
bare-armed ladies, with skirts hiked up most 
indelicately behind them, were sloshing down 
their respective doorsteps, and each wall was 
ragged with five or six frayed heads thrust 
from upper windows for the silken dalliance of 
conversation. However, it was sanctuary. It 
looked cheap. I knocked. 

A lady in frayed alpaca, carrying a house - 
flannel, came to hearken. " Oh, yerss. . . . 
Come in. Half a jiff till I finished this bottom 
stair. . . . Now then — whoa ! — don't touch 
that banister; it's a bit loose. Ver narsely 
furnished you'll find it is. There . . . half a 
crown a week. Dirt cheap, too. Why, Mrs. 
Over-the-Road charges four for hers. But I 
can't. I ain't got the cheek." 

I tripped over the cocoanut mat . The dulled 
windows were draped with a strip of gauze. 
The " narse furnicher " wasn't there. There 
was a chest of drawers whose previous owner 
had apparently been in the habit of tumbling 



120 A LONELY NIGHT 

into bed by candle-light and leaving it to 
splutter its decline and shed its pale blood 
where it would. The ceiling was picked out 
with fly-spots . It smelt . . . how shall I give 
it you? The outgoing tenant had obviously 
used the hearth as a spittoon. He had obvi- 
ously supped nightly on stout and fish-and- 
chips. He had obviously smoked the local 
Cavendish. He had obviously had an acute 
objection to draughts of any kind. The land- 
lady had obviously " done up " the room once 
a week. . . . Now perhaps you get that 
odour. 

But the lady at my side, seeing hesitation, 
began a kind of psean on the room. She sang 
it in its complete beauty. She dissected it, 
and made a panegyric on the furniture in com- 
parison with that of Mrs. Over-the-Road. She 
struck the lyre and awoke a louder and loftier 
strain on the splendour of its proportions and 
symmetry — " heaps of room here to swing a 
cat " — and her rapture and inspiration swelled 
as she turned herself to the smattering price 
charged for it. On this theme she chanted 
long and lovingly and a hundred coloured, 
senescent imageries leaped from the song, like 
spray from a mountain stream. 

Of course, I had to take it. And towards 
late afternoon, when the grey cloak of twilight 
was beginning to be torn by the gas lamps, 
I had pulled the whole place to pieces and 
found out what made it work. I had stood 
it on its head. I had reversed it, and arm- 
locked it, and committed all manner of assaults 



KINGSLAND ROAD 121 

on it. I had found twenty old cigarette ends 
under the carpet, and entomological wonders 
in the woodwork of the window. Fired by 
my example, the good lady came up to help, 
and when I returned from a stroll she had 
garnished it. Two chairs, on which in my 
innocence I sat, were draped with antima- 
cassars. Some portraits of drab people, stiffly 
posing, had been placed on the mantelshelf, 
and some dusty wool mats, set off with wax 
flowers, were lighting the chest v of drawers to 
sudden beauty. In my then mood the false 
luxury touched me . . . curiously. 

There I was and there I stayed in slow, 
mortifying idleness. You get stranded in 
Kingsland Road for a fortnight ... I wish you 
would. It would teach you so many things. 
For it is a district of cold, muddy squalor that 
it is ashamed to own itself. It is a place 
of narrow streets, dwarfed houses, backed by 
chimneys that growl their way to the free sky, 
and day and night belch forth surly smoke and 
the stink of hops. The poverty of Poplar is 
abject, and, to that extent, picturesque in its 
frankness ; there is no painful note of un- 
comely misery about it. But the poverty of 
Kingsland is the diseased poverty of dead 
flowers in the front room and sticky furniture 
on the hire system . 

My first night was the same as every other. 
My window looked out on a church tower 
which still further preyed on the wan light of 
the street, and, as I lay in bed, its swart height, 
pierced by the lit clock face, gloated stiffly over 



122 A LONELY NIGHT 

me. From back of beyond a furry voice came 
dolefully — 

Goo bay to sum-mer, goo bay, goo baaaaay ! 

That song has thrilled and chilled me ever 
since. Next door an Easy Payments piano 
was being tortured by wicked fingers that 
sought after the wild grace of Weber's " Invita- 
tion to the Valse." From the street the usual 
London night sounds floated up until well after 
midnight. There was the dull, pessimistic 
tramp of the constable, and the long rumble 
of the Southwark -bound omnibus. Some- 
times a stray motor-car would hoot and 
jangle in the distance, swelling to a clatter 
as it passed, and falling away in a pathetic 
diminuendo. A traction-engine grumbled its 
way along, shaking foundations and setting bed 
and ornaments a-trembling. Then came the 
blustering excitement of chucking-out at the 
" Galloping Horses." Half a dozen wanted 
to fight ; half a dozen others wanted to kiss ; 
everybody wanted to live in amity and be 
jollyolpal. A woman's voice cried for her 
husband, and abused a certain Long Charlie ; 
and Long Charlie demanded with piteous 
reiteration : " Why don't I wanter fight? Eh? 
Tell me that. Why don't I wanter fight? Did 
you 'ear what he called me ? Did you 'ear ? 
He called me a — a — what was it he called 
me? " 

Then came police, disbandment, and dark 
peace, as the strayed revellers melted into the 
night. Sometimes there would sound the faint 



KINGSLAND ROAD 123 

tinkle of a belated hansom, chiming solitarily, 
as though weary of frivolity. And then a final 
stillness of which the constable's step seemed 
but a part. 

It was a period of chill poverty that shamed 
to recognize itself. I was miserably, unutter- 
ably lonely. I developed a temper of acid. 
I looked on the world, and saw all things bitter 
and wicked. The passing of a rich carriage 
exasperated me to fury : I understood in those 
moments the spirit that impels men to throw 
bombs at millionaires and royalties. Among 
the furious wilds of Kingsland, Hackney, and 
Homerton I spent my rage. There seemed to be 
no escape, no outlet, no future. Sometimes I 
sat in that forlorn little room ; sometimes I 
went to bed ; sometimes I wandered and made 
queer acquaintance at street corners ; sometimes 
I even scanned that tragic column of the Daily 
Telegraph — Situations Vacant. Money went 
dribbling away. At " Dirty Dick's " you can 
get a quartern of port for threepence, and gin. 
is practically given away. Drink is a curse, I 
know, but there are innumerable times when 
it has saved a man from going under. ... I 
wish temperance fiends would recognize this. 

After a time, all effort and anxiety ceased. I 
became listlesis. I neither wondered nor antici- 
pated . I wandered about the Christmas streets, 
amid radiant shops. The black slums and 
passages were little gorges of flame and 
warmth, and in Morning Lane, where the stalls 
roared with jollity, I could even snatch some 
of their spirit and feel, momentarily, one of 



124 A LONELY NIGHT 

them. The raucous mile of Cambridge Road 
I covered many times, strolling from lit window 
to lit window, from ragged smears of lights to 
ragged chunks of dark. The multitudes of 
" Useful Presents," " Pretty Gifts," " Remark- 
able Value," " Seasonable Offerings " did not 
tantalize me ; they simply were part of another 
world. I saw things as one from Mars. 

That was a ghastly Christmas Day. 
Through the whole afternoon I tramped — from 
Hackney to Homerton, thence to Clapton, to 
Stoke Newington, to Tottenham, and back. 
Emptiness was everywhere : no people, little 
traffic. Roofs and roads were hard with a light 
frost, and in the sudden twilight the gleaming 
windows of a hundred houses shone out jeer- 
ingly. Sounds of festivity disturbed the brood- 
ing quiet of the town. Each side street was 
a corridor of warm blinds. Harmoniums, 
pianos, concertinas, mouth organs, gramo- 
phones, tin trumpets, and voices uncertainly 
controlled, poured forth their strains, mingling 
and clashing. The whole thing seemed got 
up expressly for my disturbance. In one street 
I paused, and looked through an unshaded 
window into a little interior. Tea Was in pro- 
gress . Father and mother were at table, father 
feeding the baby with cake dipped in tea, 
mother fussily busy with the teapot, while two 
bigger youngsters, with paper head-dresses 
from the crackers, were sprawling on the rug, 
engaged in the exciting sport of toast-making. 
It made me sick. A little later the snow un- 
expectedly came down, and the moon came out 



KINGSLAND ROAD 125 

and flung long passages of light over the white 
world, and forced me home to my room. 

Next day, I had no food at all, and in the 
evening I sprawled on the bed. Then things 
happened. 

The opposite room on the same landing had 
been let to a girl who worked, so I under- 
stood from my hostess, at the cork factory close 
at hand. She came home every evening at 
about six, and the little wretch invariably had 
a hot meal with her tea. It was carried up 
from below. It was carried past my door. 
I could not object to this, but I could and did 
object to the odour remaining with me. Have 
you ever smelt Irish stew after being sixteen 
hours without food? I say I objected. What 
I said was : " Can't you keep that damn stink 
out of my room?" Landlady said she was 
sorry ; didn't know it annoyed me ; but you 
couldn't keep food from smelling, could you? 

So I slammed the door. A little later came 
a timid tap. I was still lying on the bed, 
picturing for myself an end in the manner of 
a youth named Chatterton, but I slithered off 
to answer the knock. Before I could do so, 
the door was pushed softly open, and Miss 
Cork Factory ^pushed a soft head through it. 

"Say . . . don't mind me, do you? But 
. . . here ... I know all about you. I 
been watching you . . . and the old girl's told 
me, too . She given you notice ? Listen . . . 
I got a good old stew going in here. More'n 
enough for two. Come on ! " 

What would you have done ? I was seven- 



126 A LONELY NIGHT 

teen ; and she, I imagine, was about twenty. 
But a girl of twenty is three times older than 
a boy of seventeen. She commanded. She 
mothered. I felt infinitely childlike and 
absurd. I thought of refusing ; but that 
seemed an idiotic attempt at dignity which 
would only amuse this very mature young 
person. To accept seemed to throw away 
entirely one's masculinity. . . . Somehow, I 
. . . But she stepped right into the room then, 
instinctively patting her hair and smoothing 
herself, and she took me by the arm. 

" Look here, now. Don't you go on this 
silly way ; else you'll be a case for the 
morchery. Noner your nonsense, now. You 
come right along in." She flitted back, pull- 
ing me with her, to the lit doorway of her room, 
a yellow oblong of warmth and fragrance. 
" NifT it? " she jerked in allusion to the stew. 
I nodded ; and then I was inside and the door 
shut. 

She chucked me into a rickety chair by the 
dancing fire, and chattered cheerily while she 
played hostess, and I sat pale and tried to 
recover dignity in sulky silence. 

She played for a moment or so over a large 
vegetable dish which stood in the fender, and 
then uprose, with flaming face and straying 
hair, and set a large plate of real hot stuff 
before me on the small table. " There you 
are, me old University chum ! " served as her 
invitation to the feast. She shot knife, fork, 
and spoon across the table with a neat shove- 
ha'p'ny stroke. Bread followed with the same 



KINGSLAND ROAD 127 

polite service, and then she settled herself, 
squarely but very prettily, before her own 
plate, mocking me with twinkling eyes over 
her raised spoon. 

Her grace was terse but adequate. 'Well 
— here's may God help us as we deserve ! " I 
dipped my spoon, lifted it with shaking hand, 
my heart bursting to tell the little dear girl 
what I thought about her, my lips refusing to 
do anything of the sort ; refusing, indeed, to 
do anything at all ; for having got the spoon 
that far, I tried to swallow the good stuff that 
was in it, and — well ... I ... I burst into 
tears. Yes, I did. 

" What the devil " she jerked. " Now 

what th,e devil's the matter with Oh, I 

know. I see." 

11 I can't help it," I hiccuped. " It's the 
st-st-st-stew ! It's so goo-goo-good ! " 

" There, that's all right, kid. I know. I 
been like that. You have a stretch of rotten 
luck, and you don't get nothing for perhaps 
a day, and you feel fit to faint, and then at 
last you get it, and when you got it, can't 
touch it. Feel all choky, like, don't you? I 
know. You'll be all right in a minute. Get 
some more into you ! " 

I did. And I was all right. I sat by her 
fire for the rest of the evening, and smoked her 
cigarettes — twelve for a penny. And we 
talked ; rather good talk, I fancy . As the 
food warmed me, so I came out of my shell. 
And gradually the superior motherliness of my 
hostess disappeared ; I was no longer abject 



128 A LONELY NIGHT 

under her gaze ;j I no longer felt like a sheepish 
schoolboy. I saw her as what she really was — 
a pale, rather fragile, very girlish girl. We 
talked torrentially. We broke into one 
another's sentences without apology. We 
talked simultaneously. We hurled auto- 
biography at each other. . . . 

And when we discovered that it was eleven 
o'clock, she smiled, with a timid suggestion that 
we were really rather improper. 

That was my last week in Kingsland Road ; 
for luck turned, and I found work — of a sort. 
I left on the Saturday, and we went together 
to the Shoreditch Olympia in the evening. I 
parted from her at Cudgett Street corner. I 
never asked her name ; she never asked mine . 
She just shook hands, and remarked, airily, 
"Well, so long, kid. Good luck." 

I heard, vaguely, in a roundabout way, some 
little time afterwards, that she had gone off 
with the foreman of trie cork factory, and that 
he had deserted her after three months. I 
never saw her again. 



A MUSICAL NIGHT 

THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES 



AT THE PIANO 

Cane chairs, a sleek piano, table and bed in a room 

Lifted happily high from the loud streets fermentation ; 
Tobacco and chime of voices wreathing out of the gloom, 

Out of the lilied dusk at the firelights invitation. 
Then, in the muffled hour, one, strange and gracious and sad, 
Moves from the phantom hearth, and, with infinite delicacies, 
Looses his lissome hands along the murmurous keys. 

Valse, mazurka, and nocturne, prelude and polonaise 

Clamour and wander and wail on the opiate air, 
Piercing our hearts with echo of passionate days, 

Peopling a top front lodging with shapes of care. 
And as our souls, uncovered, would shamefully hide away, 
The radiant hands light up the enchanted gloom 
With the pure flame of life from the shadowless tomb. 



A MUSICAL NIGHT 

THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES 

For a few months of the year London is the 
richest of all cities in the matter of music ; but 
it is only for a few months. From the end of 
August to the end of October we have Sir 
Henry Wood's Promenade Concerts. From 
the end of May to mid-July we have the Grand 
Season at Covent Garden. Interspersed be- 
tween these, at intervals all too rare, we have 
individual concerts at the Bechstein, Steinway, 
and yEolian Halls ; sometimes an Autumn 
Season of opera or Russian ballet ; and the 
Saturday and Sunday concerts, the former at 
the Albert and Queen's Halls, and the latter, 
under the auspices of the Sunday League, at 
pretty well every theatre and music-hall in 
London and the suburbs. 

There are, however, long spells of empti- 
ness when nothing or little is doing in musical 
London, and that little hardly ever at night. 
I should like, just here, to enter a protest 
against the practice prevalent among our best 
soloists of giving their concerts in the after- 
noons. Does it not occur to MM. Pachmann, 

Paderewski, Backhaus, Hubermann, von 

131 



132 A MUSICAL NIGHT 

Vecsey, Mischa Elman, Hambourg, and 
Kreisler that there are thousands of music- 
lovers in London who are never free at after- 
noons, and cannot turn their little world upside 
down in order to snatch an afternoon even 
for something so compelling as their recitals? 
Continually London gives you these empty 
evenings. You do not want theatre or vaude- 
ville ; you want music. And it is not to be 
had at any price ; though when it is to be had 
it is very well worth having. No artist of any 
kind in music — singer, pianist, violinist, con- 
ductor—considers himself as established until 
he has appeared in London and received its 
award of merit ; and whatever good things 
may be going in other continental cities we 
know that, with the least possible waste of 
time, those good things will be submitted to us 
for our sealing judgment. There is only one 
other city in the world which has so firm a 
grip on the music of the hour, and that is 
Buenos Ayres. 

Let the superior persons, like Mr. Oscar 
Hammerstein, who say that London is not 
musical, because it sniffs at Schonberg, and 
doesn't get excited over the dead meat of 
Rossini, Auber, and Bellini, pay a visit any 
night to Queen's Hall during the Promenade 
Season . Where are the empty seats ? In the 
five-shilling tier. Where is the hall packed 
to suffocation ? In the shilling promenade. In 
the promenade there are seats for about one 
hundred, and room for about seven hundred. 
That means that six hundred Londoners stand. 



THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES 133 

close -packed, with hardly room for a change 
of posture and in an atmosphere overcharged 
with heat and sound for two hours and a half, 
listening, not to the inanities of Sullivan or 
Offenbach or Arditi, but to Weber, Palestrina, 
Debussy, Tchaikowsky, Wieniawski, Chopin, 
Mozart, Handel, and even the starch-stiff 
Bach. 

Those who care to listen to the funniosities 
of Richard Strauss may go to Drury Lane or 
Covent Garden for " Salome " or " La Legende 
de Joseph," where fat, blonde women sit and 
gloat upon the epicene muscles of Nijinsky. 
Personally, I prefer the sugar and spice of 
Italian Opera. I know it is an execrable taste, 
but as I am a most commonplace person ,1 
cannot help myself. I have loved it since child- 
hood, when the dull pages of my Violin Tutor 
were lit by crystalline fragments of Cherubini 
and Donizetti, and when the house in which 
I lived was chattering day and night Italianate 
melody. One of my earliest recollections is 
of hearing, as a tiny thing in petticoats, the 
tedious noises of the professional musician, and 
the E A D G of the fiddle was the accom- 
paniment to all my games. From noon until 
seven in the evening I played amid the squeak 
of the fiddle, the chant of the 'cello, the solemn 
throb of the double bass, and the querulous 
wail of flute and piccolo ; and always the music 
was the music of Italy, for these elders worked 
in operatic orchestras. So I learned to love 
it, and especially do I still love the moderns 
—Leoncavallo, Wolf-Ferrari, Mascagni, Puccini 



134 A MUSICAL NIGHT 

—for it was in " La Boheme " that I heard 
both Caruso and grand opera for the first 
time ; and whenever I now hear " Che gelida 
manina," even badly sung, I always want to 
sit down and have a good cry. It reminds me 
of a pale office-boy of fifteen, who had to 
hoard his pence for a fortnight and wait weary 
hours at the gallery door of Covent Garden 
to hear Caruso, Scotti, Melba, and Journet as 
the Bohemians. What nights ! I remember 
very clearly that first visit. I had heard other 
singers, English singers, the best of whom are 
seldom better than the third-rate Italians, but 
Caruso . . . What is he? He is not a 
singer. He is not a voice. He is a miracle. 
There will not be another Caruso for two or 
three hundred years ; perhaps not then . We 
had been so accustomed to the spurious, manu- 
factured voices of people like de Reszke and 
Tamagno and Maurel, that when the genuine 
article was placed before us we hardly recog- 
nized it. Here was something lovelier than 
anything that had yet been heard ; yet we 
must needs stop to carp because it was not 
quite proper. All traditions were smashed, all 
laws violated, all rules ignored. Jean de 
Reszke would strain and strain, until his 
audience suffered with him, in order to produce 
an effect which this new singer of the South 
achieved with his hands in his pockets, as he 
strolled round the stage. 

The Opera in London is really more of a 
pageant than a musical function. The front 
of the house frequently claims more attention 



THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES 135 

than the stage. On Caruso and Melba nights 
it blazes. Tiers and tiers of boxes race round 
in a semicircle. If you are early, you see them 
as black gaping mouths. But very soon they 
are filled. The stalls begin to leap with light, 
for everybody who is not anybody, but would 
like to be, drags out everything she possesses 
in the way of personal adornment, and sticks 
it on her person, so that all the world may 
wonder. At each box is a bunch of lights, and, 
with the arrival of the silks and jewellery, 
they are whipped to a thousand scintillations. 
The men stand up in the stalls and fix opera - 
glasses on the bare shoulders and necks of the 
women. The women lean to one another, and 
they talk cold, corrosive talk about those 
others. They carve up their sisters' souls for 
the amusement of their men. . . . 

The blaze of dancing light becomes painful ; 
the house, especially upstairs, is spitefully hot. 
Then the orchestra begin to tumble in ; their 
gracefully gleaming lights are adjusted, and 
the monotonous A surges over the house — the 
fiddles whine it, the golden horns softly blare 
it, and the wood-wind plays with it. 

But now there is a stir, a sudden outburst of 
clapping. Campanini is up. Slowly the lights 
dissolve into themselves. There is a sub- 
dued rustle as we settle ourselves. A few 
peremptory Sh-sh-sh! from the ardent 
galleryites. 

Campanini taps. His baton rises . . . and 
suddenly the band mumbles those few swift 
bars that send the curtain rushing up on the 



136 A MUSICAL NIGHT 

garret scene. Only a few bars . . . yet so 
marvellous is Puccini's feeling for atmosphere 
that with them he has given us all the bleak 
squalor of his story. You feel a chill at your 
heart as you hear them, and before the curtain 
rises you know that it must rise on something 
miserable and outcast. The stage is in semi- 
darkness. The garret is low-pitched, with a 
sloping roof ending abruptly in a window look- 
ing over Paris. There is a stove, a table, two 
chairs, and a bed. Nothing more. Two 
people are on. One stands at the window, 
looking, with a light air of challenge, at Paris. 
Down stage, almost on the footlights, is an 
easel, at which an artist sits. The artist is 
Scotti, the baritone, as Marcello. The 
orchestra ishudders with a few chords. The 
man at the window turns. He is a dumpy 
little man in black, wearing a golden wig. 
What a figure it is ! What a make-up ! What 
a tousled-haired, down-at-heel, out-at-elbows 
Clerkenwell exile ! The yellow wig, the 
whited-out moustache, the broken collar. . . . 
But a few more brusque bars are tossed from 
Campanini's baton, and the funny little man 
throws off, cursorily, over his shoulder, a short 
passage explaining how cold he is. The house 
thrills. That short passage, throbbing with 
tears and laughter, has rushed, like a stream 
of molten gold, to the utmost reaches of the 
auditorium, and not an ear that has not jumped 
for joy of it. For he is Rudolf o, the poet ; in 
private life, Enrico Caruso, Knight of the Order 
of San Giovanni, Member of the Victorian 



THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES 137 

Order, Cavaliere of the Order of Santa Maria, 
and many other things. . . . 

As the opera proceeds, so does the marvel 
grow. You think he can have nothing more to 
give than he has just given ; the next moment 
he deceives you. Towards the end of the first 
Act, Melba enters. You hear her voice, fragile 
and firm as fluted china, before she enters. 
Then comes the wonderful love -duet— " Che 
gelida manina " for Caruso and " Mi chiamano 
Mimi " for Melba. Gold swathed in velvet is 
his voice. Like all true geniuses, he is prodigal 
of his powers ; he flings his lyrical fury over 
the house. He gives all, yet somehow conveys 
that thrilling suggestion of great things in 
reserve. Again and again he recaptures his 
first fine careless rapture. He seems to say 
to his voice : " Go^do what you will ! " And 
it dances forth like a little girl on a sunlit 
road, wayward, captivating, never fatigued, 
leaping where others stumble, tripping many 
miles, with fresh laughter and bright quick 
blood. There never were such warmth and 
profusion and display. Not only is it a voice 
of incomparable magnificence : it has that in- 
tangible quality that smites you with its own 
mood : just the something that marks the 
difference between an artist and a genius. 
There are those who sniff at him. " No artist," 
they say ; " look what he sings." They would 
like him better if he were not popular ; if he 
concerned himself, not with Puccini and Leon- 
cavallo, but with those pretentiously subtle 
triflers, Debussy and his followers. Some 



138 A MUSICAL NIGHT 

people can never accept beauty unless it be 
remote. But true beauty is never remote. The 
art which demands transcendentalism for its 
appreciation stamps itself at once as inferior. 
True art, like love, asks nothing, and gives 
everything. The simplest people can under- 
stand and enjoy Puccini and Caruso and Melba, 
because the simplest people are artists. And 
clearly, if beauty cannot speak to us in our 
own language, and still retain its dignity, it 
is not beauty at all. 

Caruso speaks to us of the little things we 
know, but he speaks with a lyric ecstasy. 
Ecstasy is a horrible word ; it sounds like 
something to do with algebra ; but it is the 
one word for this voice. The passion of him 
has at times almost frightened me. I remember 
hearing him at the first performance of 
" Madame Butterfly," and he hurt us . . . 
horribly. He worked up the love-duet with 
Butterfly at the close of the first act in such 
fashion that our hands were wrung, we were 
perspiring, and I at least was near to fainting. 
Such fury, such volume of liquid sound could 
not go on, we felt. But it did. He carried 
a terrific crescendo passage as lightly as a 
schoolgirl singing a lullaby, and ended on 
a tremendous note which he sustained for sixty 
seconds. As the curtain fell we dropped back 
in our seats, limp, dishevelled, and pale. It 
was we who were exhausted. Caruso trotted 
on, bright, alert, smiling, and not the slightest 
trace of fatigue did he show. 

It seems to have been a superb stroke of 



THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES 139 

fortune for us that Caruso should have come 
along contemporaneously with Puccini . Puccini 
has never definitely written an opera for his 
friend ; yet, to hear him sing them, you might 
think that every one had been specially made 
for him alone. Their temperaments are mar- 
vellously matched. Each is Italian and 
Southern to the bone. Whatever Caruso may 
be singing, whether it be Mozart or Gounod 
or Massenet or Weber, he is really singing 
Italy. Whatever setting Puccini may take 
for his operas, be it Japan, or Paris, or the 
American West, his music is never anything 
but Italian. 

And I would not have it otherwise. It may 
offend some artistic consciences that Butterfly, 
the Japanese courtesan, should sob out her 
lament in music which is purely Italian in 
character and colour ; but what a piece of 
melody it is ! 

Puccini's is a still small voice ; very plead- 
ing, very conscious of itself and of the pathos 
of our little span of living ; but the wistfulness 
of its appeal is almost heartbreaking. He can 
never, I suppose, stand among the great com- 
posers ; dwarfed he must always be against 
Mozart or Weber, or even Verdi. But he has 
done what all wise men must do : he has 
discovered the one thing he can perform well, 
and he is performing it very well indeed. His 
genius is slim and miniature, but he handles 
it as an artist. There is no man living who 
can achieve such effects with so slender 
material. There is no man living who can so 



140 A MUSICAL NIGHT 

give you, in a few bars, the soul of the little 
street -girl ; no man living who can so give you 
the flavour of a mood, or make you smell so 
sharply the atmosphere of a public street, a 
garret, a ballroom, or a prairie. And he 
always succeeds because he is always sincere. 
A bigger man might put his tongue in his cheek 
and sit down to produce something like " La 
Boheme," and fail miserably, simply because 
he didn't mean it. 

When Puccini has something to say, though 
it may be nothing profound or illuminating, 
he says it ; and he can say the trite thing more 
freshly, with more delicacy, and in more haunt- 
ing tones, than any other musician. His 
vocabulary is as marvellous as his facility in 
orchestration and in the development of a 
theme. He gets himself into tangles from 
which there seems no possible escape, only to 
extricate himself with the airiest of touches. 
Never does his fertility of melodic invention 
fail him. He is as prodigal in this respect as 
Caruso in his moments. Where others achieve 
a beautiful phrase, and rest on it, Puccini 
never idles ; he has others and others, and 
he crowds them upon you until the ear is 
surfeited with sweetness, and you can but sit 
and marvel. 

There it is. Sniff at it as you will, it is a 
great art that captures you against your reason, 
and when Puccini and Caruso join forces, they 
can shake the soul out of the most rabid of 
musical purists. What they do to common- 
place people like myself is untellable. I have 



THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES 141 

tried to hint at it in these few remarks, but 
really I have told you nothing . . . nothing. 



I am not over -fond of the Promenade Con- 
certs. You have, of course, everything of the 
best — the finest music of the world, the finest 
English orchestra, and a neat little concert - 
hall ; but somehow there is that about it that 
suggests Education. I have a feeling that Sir 
Henry is taking me by the hand, training me 
up in the way I should, musically, go. And I 
hate being trained. I don't want things ex- 
plained to me. The programme looks rather 
like " Music without Tears " or " First Steps 
for the Little Ones." I know perfectly well 
what Wagner meant by the " Tannhauser " 
overture, and what Beethoven wants to say 
to me in the Ninth Symphony. I don't want 
these things pointed out to me, and sandwiched 
between information as to when the composer 
was born, how long he lived, and how many 
hundred works he wrote. However, all that 
apart, the Promenades are an institution which 
we should cherish . For a shilling you can lean 
against the wall of the area, and smoke, and 
take your fill of the best in music. If there is 
anything that doesn't interest you, you can visit 
the bar until it is concluded. The audience 
on the Promenade is as interesting as the pro- 
gramme. All types are to be found here— the 
serious and hard-up student, the musically 
inclined working-man, probably a member of 
some musical society in his suburb, the young 



142 A MUSICAL NIGHT 

clerk, the middle-aged man, and a few people 
who KNOW. 

The orchestra is well set, and its pendant 
crimson lamps and fernery make a solemn pic- 
ture in the soft light. The vocalists and 
soloists are not, usually, of outstanding merit, 
but they sing and play agreeably, and, even 
if they attempt more than their powers justify 
them in doing, they never distress you. Sir 
Henry Wood's entrance on the opening night 
of any season is an impressive affair. As each 
known member of the orchestra comes in, he 
receives an ovation ; but ovation is a poor 
descriptive for Sir Henry's reception. There 
is no doubt that he has done more for music 
in England than any other man, and his 
audiences know this ; they regard him almost 
as a friend. 

He is an artist in the matter of programmes. 
He builds it up as a chef builds up an 
elaborate banquet, by the blending of many 
flavours and essences, each item a subtle, un- 
marked progression on its predecessor. He 
is very fond of his Russians, and his readings 
of Tchaikowsky seem to me the most beautiful 
work he does. I do not love Tchaikowsky, but 
he draws me by, I suppose, the attraction of 
repulsion. The muse who guides the dream - 
ings of the Russian artist is a sombre and 
heavy -lidded lady, but most sombre, I think, 
when she moves in the brain of the musician. 
Then she wears the glooms and sables of the 
hypochondriac. She does not " nerve us with 
incessant affirmations." Rather, she enervates 



THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES 143 

us with incessant dubitations. It is more than 
a relief to leave the crowded Promenade, after 
a Tchaikowsky symphony, to stroll in the dusky 
glitter of Langham Place, and return to listen 
to the clear, cool tones of Mozart, as sparkling 
and as gracious as a May morning ! Next to 
Tchaikowsky, Sir Henry gives us much of 
Wagner and Beethoven and Mendelssohn. I can 
never understand why Mendelssohn is played 
nowadays . His music always seems to me to be 
so provincial and gentlemanly and underbred 
as to remind one of a county ball. I am sure 
he always composed in a frock-coat, silk hat, 
and lavender gloves . When he is being played, 
many of us have to rush away and saunter in 
the foyer. 

Usually the programme contains some 
examples of modern French music (a delicate 
horror by Ravel, perhaps) and of the early 
Italians. You will get something sweet and 
suave and restful by Palestrina or Handel, and 
conclude, perhaps, with a tempest of Berlioz. 

During the season of the Promenades, there 
are also excellent concerts going on in the 
lost districts of London. There is, to begin 
with, the Grand Opera season at the Old Vic. 
in Waterloo Road, where you can get a box 
for one-and-sixpence, and a seat in the gallery 
for twopence. The orchestra is good, and the 
singers are satisfactory. The operas include 
" Daughter of the Regiment," and run through 
Verdi and some of Wagner to Mascagni and 
Charpentier. The audience is mostly drawn 
from the surrounding streets, the New Cut and 



144 A MUSICAL NIGHT 

Lower Marsh. It wears its working clothes, 
and it smokes cut Cavendish ; but there is not 
a whisper from the first bar of the overture to 
the curtain. The chorus is drawn from the 
local clubs, and a very live and intelligent 
chorus it is. Then there are the Saturday 
evening concerts at the People's Palace in 
Whitechapel, at the Surrey Masonic Hall, in 
Camberwell, at Cambridge House, and at 
Vincent Square. In each case the programme 
is distinctly classical. It is only popular in the 
sense that the prices are small and the per- 
formers' services are honorary. Many a time 
have I attended one of these concerts, because 
I knew I should hear there some old, but 
obscure, classic that I should never be likely 
to hear at any of the West End concert -halls. 

These West End halls are unhappily 
situated. The dismal Bond Street holds one, 
another stands cheek by jowl with Marl- 
borough Police Court, and the other two are 
stuck deep in the melancholic greyness of 
Wigmore Street. All are absurdly inaccessible. 
However, when it is a case of Paderewski or 
Kubelik or Backhaus or Kreisler, people will 
make pilgrimages to the end of the earth . . . 
or to Wigmore Street. It was at the Bechstein, 
on a stifling June evening, that I first heard 
that mischievous angel, Vladimir de Pachmann. 

We had dined solidly, with old English ale, 
at " The Cock," in Fleet Street. Perhaps 
tomato soup, mutton cutlets, quarts of bitter, 
apple and blackberry tart and cream, macaroni 
cheese, coffee, and kiimmel are hardly in the 



THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES 145 

right key for an evening with Chopin. But 
I am not one of those who take their pleasures 
sadly. If I am to appreciate delicate art, I 
must be physically well prepared. It may be 
picturesque to sit through a Bayreuth Festival 
on three dates and a nut, but monkey-tricks of 
that kind are really a slight on one's host. 
However, I felt very fat, physically, and very 
Maeterlinckian, spiritually, as we clambered 
into a cab and swung up the great bleak space 
of Kingsway. 

At the entrance of the Bechstein we ran 
against a bunch of critics, and adjourned to 
the little place at the opposite corner, so that 
one of the critics might learn from us what 
he ought to say about the concert. We had 
just time to slip into our seats, and then Pach- 
mann, sleek and bullet -headed, minced on to 
the platform. I said that I felt fat, physically, 
and Maeterlinckian or Burne-Jonesy, or any- 
thing else that suggests the twilight mood, 
spiritually. But the moment Pachmann came 
on, he drove the mood clean out of us. Obvi- 
ously, he wasn't feeling Maeterlinckian or 
Chopinesque. He was feeling very full of 
Pachmann, one could jsee. Nothing die-away 
or poetic about him. He was fat physically, 
and he looked fat spiritually. One conceived 
him much more readily nodding over the 
fire with the old port, than playing Chopin 
in a bleak concert-hall, laden with solemn 
purples and drabs, stark and ungarnished save 
for a few cold flowers and ferns. 

However, there he was ; and after he had 
10 



146 A MUSICAL NIGHT 

played games and cracked jokes, of which 
nobody knew the secrets but himself, with the 
piano -stool, his hair, and his handkerchief, he 
set to work. He flourished a few scales ; 
looked up ; giggled ; said something to the 
front row ; looked off and nodded ; rubbed 
his fingers ; gently patted his ashen cheek ; 
then stretched both hands to the keys. 

He played first a group of Preludes. What 
is there to say about him? Nothing. Surely 
never, since Chopin went from us, has Chopin 
been so played. The memory of my Fleet 
Street dinner vanished. The hall vanished. 
All surroundings vanished. Vladimir, the antic, 
took us by the hand and led us forth into a 
new country : a country like nothing that we 
have seen or dreamed of, and therefore a coun- 
try of which not the vaguest image can be 
created. It was a country, or, perhaps, a street 
of pale shadows . . . and that is all I know. 
Its name is Pachmann -land. 

Before he was through the first short pre- 
lude, he had us in his snare. One by one the 
details of the room faded, and nothing was left 
but a cloud of lilac in which were Pachmann 
and the sleek, gleaming piano. As he played, 
change succeeded change. The piano was 
labelled Bechstein, but it might just as well 
have been labelled Bill Bailey. Under Pach- 
mann, the wooden structure took life, as it 
were, and became a living thing, breathing, 
murmuring, clamouring, shrieking. Soon there 
was neither Bechstein, nor Pachmann, nor 
Chopin . . . only a black creature . . . 



THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES 147 

Piano. One shivered, and felt curiously 
afraid. . . . 

Then, suddenly, there was a crash of chords 
— and silence. That crash had shattered every- 
thing, and, looking" up, we saw nothing but the 
grinning Pachmann. One half -remembered 
that he had been grinning and gesturing and 
grimacing with ape -like imbecility all the time, 
yet, somehow, one had not noticed it. He 
bobbed up and down, and grinned, and 
applauded himself. But there was something 
uncanny, mysterious. We looked at one 
another uneasily, afraid to exchange glances. 
Nobody spoke. Nobody wanted to speak. A 
few smiled shy, secret smiles, half-afraid of 
themselves. For some moments nobody even 
applauded. Something had been with us. 
Something strange and sad and exquisitely 
fragile had gone from us. 

Pachmann looked at us, noted our dumb 
wonder, and — giggled like an idiot. 



A JEWISH NIGHT 
WHITECHAPEL 



LONDON ROSES 

When the young year woos all the world to flower 
With gold and silver of sun and shower, 

The girls troop out with an elfin clamour, 

Delicate bundles of lace and light. 
And London is laughter and youth and playtime, 
Fair as the million-blosso77ied may-time : 

All her ways are afire with glamour, 

With dainty damosels pink and while. 

The weariest streets new joys discover ; 
The sweet glad girl and the lyric lover 

Sing their hearts to the moment 's flying, 

Never a thought to time or tears. 
O frivolous frocks / O fragrant faces, 
Scattering blooms in the gloomy places ! 

Shatter and scatter our sombre sighing, 

And lead us back to the golden years ! 



A JEWISH NIGHT 

WHITECHAPEL 

Whitechapel exists under false pretences. It 
has no right to its name, for the word White- 
chapel arouses grim fears in the minds of those 
who know it not. Its reputation is as theatri- 
cally artificial as that of the New York Bowery. 
Its poverty and its tradition of lawlessness are 
sedulously fostered by itself for the benefit of 
the simple-minded slummer. 

To-day it is, next to St. John's Wood, the 
most drably respectable quarter of the town. 
This is explained by the fact that it is the 
Ghetto : the home of the severely moral Jew. 
There is mp disorder in Whitechapel. There is 
no pillage or rapine or bashing. The colony 
leads its own pleasant life, among its own 
people, interfering with none and desiring 
intercourse with none. It has its own manners 
and customs and its own simple and very 
beautiful ceremonies. The Jews in London are 
much scattered. They live in various quarters, 
according to the land of their birth. Thus, 
the French Jews are in Soho, the German Jews 
in Great Charlotte Street, the Italian Jews in 
Clerkenwell, while those of Whitechapel are 



152 A JEWISH NIGHT 

either Russian Jews or Jews who have, for three 
generations, been settled in London. The 
wealthy Jew, who fancies himself socially, the 
fat, immoral stockbroker and the City 
philanderer, has deserted the surroundings of 
his humbler compatriots for the refinements of 
Highbury, Maida Vale, and Bayswater. 

The Whitechapel Ghetto begins at Aldgate, 
branches off at that point where Commercial 
Street curls its nasty length to Shoreditch, and 
embraces the greater part of Commercial Road 
East, sprawling on either side. Here at every 
turn you will meet the Jew of the comic papers . 
You will see expressive fingers, much jewelled, 
flying in unison with the rich Yiddish tongue. 
You will see beards and silk hats which are 
surely those which decorated the Hebrew in 
Eugene Sue's romance. And you will find a 
spirit of brotherhood keener than any other 
race in the world can show. It is something 
akin to the force that inspired that splendid 
fraternity that once existed in London, and is . 
now no more : I mean the Costers. If a Jew { 
is in trouble or in any kind of distress, a most 
beautiful thing happens : his friends rally 
round him. 

The atmosphere of the Ghetto is a singular 
mixture. It is half -ironic gaiety and half- 
melancholy. But it has not the depressing 
sadness of the Russian Quarter. Its temper 
is more akin to that of the Irish colony that 
has settled around Southwark and Bermondsey. 
There is sadness, but no misery. There is 
gloom, but no despair. There is hilarity, but 



WHITECHAPEL 153 

no frivolity. There is a note of delight, with 
sombre undertones. There is nothing of the 
rapture of living, but rather the pride of 
accepted destiny. In the hotels and cafes this 
is most marked. At the Aldgate Hotel, you 
may sit in the brasserie and listen to the 
Russian Trio discoursing wistful music, while 
the packed tables reek with smoke and Yiddish 
talk ; but there is a companionable, almost 
domestic touch about the place which is so 
lacking about the Western lounges. Young 
Isaacs is there, flashing with diamonds and 
hair-oil, and Rebecca is with him, and the 
large, admiring parents of both of them sit 
with them and drink beer or eat sandwiches. 
And Isaacs makes love to his Rebecca in full 
sight of all. They lounge in their chairs, 
arms enclasped, sometimes kissing, sometimes 
patting one another. And the parents look on, 
and roll their curly heads and say, with subtle 
significance, " Oi-oi-oi ! " many times. 

Out in the street there is the same homely, 
yearning atmosphere . It is the homeliness of a 
people without a home, without a country. 
They are exiles who have flung together, as 
well as may be, the few remnants of their pos- 
sessions, adding to them little touches that may 
re-create the colour of their land, and have 
settled down to make the best of things . Their 
feasts and festivals are full of this yearning. 
The Feast of Maccabeus, which is celebrated 
near our Christmas -time, is delightfully 
domestic. It is preceded, eight days before, 
by the Feast of the Lights. In each house a 



154 A JEWISH NIGHT 

candle is lit — one candle on the first day, two 
on the second, three on the third, and so on 
until the eighth day, which is that dedicated 
to Maccabeus. Then there are f eastings, and 
throughout the rich evenings the boys walk 
with the girls or salute the latter as they lounge 
at the corners with that suggestion in their 
faces of lazy strength and smouldering fire. 
A children's service is held in the synagogues, 
and cakes and sweets are distributed. The 
dark, vivid beauty of these children shows mar- 
vellously against the greys of Whitechapel. 
Every Saturday of the year the streets are 
filled with them, for then all shops are shut, all 
work suspended, and the little ones are in those 
best frocks and velvet suits in which even the 
poorest parents are so proud to clothe their 
offspring. They love colour ; and ribbons of 
many hues are lavished on the frocks and 
tunics. One of my London moments was when 
I first saw, in Whitechapel High Street, a little 
Jewess, with masses of jet-black hair, dressed 
in vermilion and white. I wonder, by the 
way, why it is that the children of the genteel 
quarters of London, such as Kensington 
Gardens, have no hair, or at any rate, only 
skimpy little twigs of it, while the children 
of the East are loaded with curls and tresses 
of an almost tropical luxuriance, and are 
many times more beautiful. Does that terrify- 
ing process called Good Breeding kill all 
beauty? Does careful feeding and tending 
poison the roots of loveliness? I wonder. . . . 
Anyway, the Jews, beautiful alike in face and 



WHITECHAPEL 155 

richness of tresses, stand to the front in two 
of the greatest callings of the world — art and 
fighting. Examine the heroes of the prize- 
ring; at least two -thirds of them are Jews. 
Examine the world's greatest musicians and 
singers ; and the same may be said. 

On Sundays, of course, only the rags of 
everyday are seen, for then the work of the 
week begins again. At about the time of our 
Easter the Feast of the Passover is celebrated. 
Then, if you walk down Middlesex Street any 
Sunday morning you will notice an activity 
even more feverish than that which it mostly 
presents. Jews of every nationality flock to 
it ; and for the week preceding this Feast the 
stall -holders dp tremendous business, not, as 
is customary, with the Gentiles, but among their 
own people. The Feast of the Passover is 
one of the oldest and quaintest religious cere- 
monies of the oldest religion in the world. 
Fasting and feasting intermingle with 
observances. Spring-cleaning is general at 
this season, for all things must be kosher-al- 
pesach, or clean and pure. At the cafes you 
will find a special kosher bar, whereon are 
wines and spirits in brand new decanters, 
glasses freshly bought and cleansed, and a 
virgin cloth surmounting the whole. The 
domestic and hardware shops are busy, for the 
home must be replenished with chaste vessels 
— pots and pans and all utensils #re bought with 
reckless disregard of expense. Milk may not 
be bought from the milkman's cans. Each 
house fetches its own from the shops, in new, 



156 A JEWISH NIGHT 

clean jugs, which are, of course, " kosher " ; 
and nothing is eaten but unleavened bread. 

When the fast is over, begins the feast, and 
the cafes and the family dining-rooms are full. 
Down a side street stand straggling armies of 
ragged, unkempt Jews — men, women and 
children. These are the destitutes. For them 
the season brings no rejoicing. Therefore their 
compatriots come forward, and at the office 
of the Jewish Board of Guardians they 
assemble to distribute supplies of grocery, 
vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, and so forth. 
Country or sex matters not ; all Jews must 
rejoice, and, when necessary, must be supplied 
with the means of rejoicing. So here are 
gathered all the wandering Jews without sub- 
stance. Later, after the fine feed which is 
provided for them, there are services in the 
synagogue. The men and women, in strict 
isolation, are a drama in themselves. Men 
with long beards and sad, shifty faces ; men 
with grey beards, keen eyes, and intellectual 
profile ; men with curly hair and Italian 
features ; and women with dark, shining hair 
and flashing eyes — men, women, and children 
of every country and clime, rich and poor, are 
gathered there to worship after the forms of 
the saddest of all faiths. 

The Ghetto is full of life every evening, 
for then the workshops and factories and ware- 
houses are closed, and the handsome youth of 
Whitechapel is free to amuse itself. Most of 
the girls work at the millinery establishments, 
and most of the boys at the wholesale drapery 



WHITECHAPEL 157 

houses. The High Street is one of the most 
picturesque main streets of London. The little 
low butchers' shops, fronted by raucous stalls, 
the gabled houses, and the flat -faced hotels, are 
some of the loveliest bits of eighteenth-century 
domestic architecture remaining in London. 
And the crowd ! It sweeps you from your 
feet ; it catches you up, drags you, drops you, 
jostles you ; and you don't mind in the least . 
They are all so gay, and they look upon you 
with such haunting glances that it is impossible 
to be cross with them. If you leave the 
London Docks, and crawl up the dismal 
serenity of Cable Street, the High Street seems 
to snatch you. You catch the mood of the 
moment ; you dance with the hour. There is 
noise and the flare of naphtha. There are 
opulent glooms. The regiment of lame stalls 
is packed so closely, shoulder to shoulder, that 
if one gave an inch the whole line would fall. 
Meat, greengrocery, Brummagem jewellery for 
the rich beauty of Rhoda, shell -fish, con- 
fectionery, old magazines, pirated music, haber- 
dashery, "throw-out" (or Sudden Death) 
cigars — all these glories are waiting to seize 
your pennies. Slippery slices of fish sprawl 
dolefully on the slabs. The complexion of 
the meat-shops, under the yellow light, is rich 
and strange. But there is very little shouting ; 
the shopkeepers make no attempt to entice you . 
There are the goods : have 'em if you like ; if 
not, leave 'em. 

If you are hungry, and really want some- 
thing to eat, I suggest your going to one of the 



158 A JEWISH NIGHT 

restaurants or hotels, and trying their table 
d'hote. They run usually to six or seven 
courses, two of which will satisfy any reason- 
able hunger. Yet I have seen frail young girls 
tackle the complete menu, and come up fresh 
and smiling at the end. Of course, women are, 
as a rule, much heavier eaters than men, but 
these delicate, pallid girls of the Ghetto set 
you marvelling. I have occasionally played 
host to one of them, and delightful table com- 
panions they were. For they can talk ; they 
have, if not humour, at any rate a very mordant 
wit, as all melancholy peoples have ; and 
they languish in the most delicately captivating 
way. 

On my first experience, we started the meal 
with Solomon Gundy — pickled herring. Then 
followed a thick soup, in which were little 
threads of a paste made from eggs and flour 
and little balls of unleavened dough. Then 
came a kind of pea-soup, and here Rachel 
ordered unfermented Muscat wine. The good 
Jew may not touch shell -fish or any fish with- 
out scales, so we were next served with fried 
soles and fried plaice, of which Rachel took 
both, following, apparently, the custom of the 
country. Although the menu consists of seven 
courses, each item contains two, and sometimes 
three or four, dishes ; and the correct diner 
tastes every one. Roast veal, served in the 
form of stew, followed, and then came roast 
fowl and tongue. There were also salads, and 
sauerkraut, and then a pease -pudding, and then 
almond -pudding, and then staffen, and then . . . 



WHITECHAPEL 159 

I loosened a button, and gazed upon Rachel 
in wonder. She was still eating bread. 

It is as well to be careful, before visiting 
any of the Ghetto cafes, to acquaint yourself 
with rules and ceremonies. Otherwise, you 
may unintentionally give offence and make 
yourself several kinds of idiot. I have never 
at any period of my London life been favoured 
with a guiding hand. Wherever I went, what- 
ever I did, I was alone. That is really the 
only way to see things, and certainly the only 
way to learn things. If I wanted to penetrate 
the inmost mysteries of Hoxton, I went to 
Hoxton, and blundered into private places and 
to any holy of holies that looked interesting. 
Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes I 
got what I asked for. When at seventeen I 
wanted to find out if the Empire Promenade 
was really anything like the Empire 
Promenade, I went to the Empire Promenade. 
Of course, I made mistakes and muddled 
through. I made mistakes in the Ghetto. I 
was the bright boy who went to a shabby little 
cafe in Osborn Street, and asked for smoked 
beef, roll and butter, and coffee. The expres- 
sion on that waiter's face haunts me whenever 
I feel bad and small. He did not order me 
out of the restaurant. He did not assault me. 
He looked at me, and I grieved to see his dear 
grey eyes ... so sad. He said : " Pardon, 
but this is a kosher cafe. I am not a Jew 
myself, but how can I serve what you order? 
Tell me — how can I do it? What? " 

I said : " I beg your pardon, too. I don't 
understand. Tell me more." 



160 A JEWISH NIGHT 

He said : " Would you marry your aunt ? 
No. Neither may a Jewish restaurant serve 
milk, or its derivatives, such as, so to speak, 
butter, cheese, and so forth, on the same table 
with flesh. You ask for meat and bread and 
butter. You must have bread with your meat. 
If you have coffee, sir, you will have it 
Black." 

I said : " It is . my fault. No offence 
intended. I didn't know. Once again, I have 
made an ass of myself. Had I better not go? " 

He said, swiftly : " No, don't go, sir. Oh, 
don't go. Listen : have the smoked beef, with 
a roll. Follow with prunes or kugel. And 
if you want a drink with your meal, instead of 
afterwards, have tea-and-lemon in place of 
black coffee." 

And so, out of that brutal mistake, I made 
yet another London friend, of whom I have, 
roughly, about two thousand five hundred 
scattered over the four-mile radius. 



A MISERABLE NIGHT 
LISSON GROVE 



ii 



IN MARYBONE 

The cold moon lights our attic stair, 
In Marybone, in Marybone ! 

And windows float in lyric air, 
In Marybone, in Marybone ! 

O derelict day ! O barren night! 

O phantoms of a dream's delight, 
You midnight hours in Marybone .' 

The high gods hold festivities, 
In Marybone, in Marybone I 
We have ransacked the golden years 
Of all their fruit of joy and tears, 
Gathered their burden to our mind, 

In Marybone, in Marybone ! 
But O lost love, for one warm kiss 
To break the weeping of the wind 
That beats about this Marybone, 
This damned and dusty Marybone! 



A MISERABLE NIGHT 

LISSON GROVE 

" Shadows we are, and shadows we pursue ! " 
cried my illustrious ancestor ; and I always 
think of that when I walk down Lisson Street 
or Lisson Grove. For there, at night, you are 
but a shadow, a sickly shadow, pursuing other 
sickly shadows that seem to fall about you 
from the cobwebbed sky. The colour of the 
place is a lowering purple. It is the gloom 
of wickedness, shot with timidity. Shadowy 
as its people are, you may recognize them — 
the hefty man, well dressed but with no obvious 
employment, the woman, and the young girls 
in short frocks, who carry something in their 
manner, their glances, that seems unhealthily 
ripe. They stand in the approaches to the 
hideous Residences and Mansions, with petu- 
lant noses and tossing hair, idling, and seeming 
to wait for Something to happen. There is 
something more than childish playfulness in 
the pert kick of the little black leg at the 
casual passer. They seem to regard all passers 
with a resentful smile. Almost it seems to 

express irritation that the grown girls of the 

163 



164 A MISERABLE NIGHT 

district, by no means so pretty, should attract 
the smiles and appraising scrutinies of the boys 
and men, just because they have long skirts and 
hair " up," while they should not even be seen 
because their curls run to their waists and their 
skirts fall only to the knee. The only people 
who do glance at them are well-dressed old 
men, and they peer at them, and sometimes 
sidle up to them with a sheepish, insidious 
smile. . . . Every now and then a house or 
flat in the neighbourhood is raided, and sicken- 
ing things are known ; from which it would 
seem that the more civilized we grow, the more 
the lunatic practices develop among us. That 
is why the breath of the Lisson country is bitter 
and poisonous. 

I have other reasons for hating it, for I once 
knew some one who lived there. I forget how 
or where I first met her ; I think it was 
at one of those quasi-continental bars around 
Coventry Street, where you may meet Mamie 
from Fifth Avenue, with a chew in her cheek ; 
Lizzie from Lambeth ; Bessie from the Lan- 
cashire mills ; Molly from Devonshire ; and 
Marie from the Boulevard des Italiens. A 
hard-featured lot. I was, if I remember, in 
a blank mood, and I was idling there, trying 
to lash myself into some kind of interest in 
things. Now I think of it, I had just finished 
a book. There is something infinitely tragic in 
finishing a book. It is like losing a child, or 
a mistress, or a good comrade. Something 
has gone from you, from the streets, the sky, 
and the familiar places. Nothing is the same. 



LISSON GROVE 165 

Feeling run down, you go away to seaside 
or village, only to find that you dare not be 
alone. For there is the solitary lunch, with 
nothing to think about ; the solitary afternoon, 
with nothing to think about ; the solitary 
dinner, with nothing to think about ; and, oh, 
the long, waste evening ! Thoughts, dreams, 
and deeds, all are coloured by the book that 
is done with — that is, so far as you are con- 
cerned, dead and buried. Through the sad 
yellow dusk come little elfin companies, forlorn, 
far-away things — memories, fancies, old desires 
— settling all about you, some of them resting 
upon your heart, but so lightly that you scarcely 
feel their dancing feet. 

To every writer, in those slack moments 
between tea and dinner, or in the waste hours 
between dark and dawn, when you awaken 
with no hope of further sleep, there comes this 
mood, when a damnable little voice whispers 
in your ear : " Is it worth while ? " The day's 
work is done. You look back on it, and on the 
work of your life. You realize that you are 
a man of letters and acquainted with grief. 
Are you downhearted? Yes. You have 
used your pen to tell the truth, flinching 
nothing, exaggerating nothing, never question- 
ing whether people want to read about the 
truth, but going steadily on, and setting it 
down. Was it worth while ? Has it helped 
you at all in this dusty business of life ? Has it 
given you anything of love, and warmth, and 
possession ? Will it make the grave less cold 
for you? And the impish voice, in that empty 



i66 A MISERABLE NIGHT 

moment, answers, a little sadly and pitifully : 
" No. No one cares a damn whether you 
finish that chapter, or that book. If the 'bus 
conductor is not at his garage on time, it 
matters quite a lot to numbers of people. But 
it matters to nobody, hardly to yourself, 
whether you finish your work." 

In this mood Ethel found me. She came 
over to my table, with her cheery catch-phrase : 
" What are we all here for? " and rallied me 
out of it. For this I was grateful, and we sat 
there for some time, in that cosmopolitan com- 
pany, talking and drinking her favourite drink, 
advocaat ; and when, at half -past twelve, we 
were chucked out, I walked home with her to 
Lisson Street, where she promised to make 
coffee for me. 

We climbed a stark stone stair, somewhere 
in the Residences, and suddenly, with the click 
of a key, I found myself in one of her two 
rooms. I discovered a basket-chair, and made 
myself comfortable, while she fussed with a 
spirit-lamp. 

Over the coffee we talked, and she told me 
her story. The usual story. Not the usual 
story of fiction, but the usual story of life. 
For, make no mistake about it, Ethel was no 
victim. She was not lured on by a brutal 
deceiver, and then flung into the cruel maw 
of London. Bless your heart, no. These things 
are not done now ; to-day it is the young 
suburban girl who seduces the boy. Ethel 
simply fulfilled the poet's behest, and gave all 
to love — for a consideration, knowing full well 



LISSON GROVE 167 

what she was doing and what would be its 
consequences. I doubt if there was ever any 
innocence — in the sense of ignorance — about 
Ethel, at any age. After her first adventure, 
she found a friend who gave her frocks and 
things and lessons in the mysterious art of man- 
leading. For a time, she did well. Then her 
first man came back to her. She chucked him, 
but when she found he was poor and sick, 
she went to his rooms and dug him out. (I 
know women don't do these things, as a rule. 
I wish to God they did, for the stupidity of 
etiquette has been responsible for more tears 
and suffering in this world than any active 
wickedness.) That was what Ethel did. She 
found him there, very ill, with a gin -bottle. 
And she went out and bought things for him, 
and neglected some one else for so long that 
her prosperity ceased, and she was having a 
very thin time when I met her. 

To add to her troubles she was a " coke- 
sniffer." This was ruining her beauty; for, 
though she was but twenty, one saw in her 
face the ruins of a really haunting loveliness : 
all the wisdom and all the tears of the ages. 
She was not beautiful in the Greek sense ; there 
is nothing more tedious than the Greek idea in 
these matters. She was more interesting : 
indefinite, wayward. The features were 
irregular, but there was some quality in her 
face that called you back. Her skin was still 
translucent and fine. Above her face was a 
crown of thunderous hair, shot with an elfin 
sheen, and the small loaded curls raced about 



168 A MISERABLE NIGHT 

her neck. Her glances were steady and rather 
more reticent than is usual in her profession, 
and in her movements was the dignity of the 
child. She had, too, an odd, wide laugh — as 
sad and strange as Caledonian Road — and 
knew how to use it. Only in the lips was there 
any touch of grossness. 

She had passed her childhood under the 
tremendous glooms of the East and West India 
Docks. 

You know, perhaps, the East India Dock 
which lies a little north of its big brother, the 
West India Dock : a place of savagely mascu- 
line character, evoking the brassy mood. By 
daytime a cold, nauseous light hangs about it ; 
at night a devilish darkness settles upon it. 
You know, perhaps, the fried-fish shops that 
punctuate every corner in the surrounding maze 
of streets ; the " general " shops with their 
assorted rags, their broken iron, and their 
glum -faced basins of kitchen waste ; and the 
lurid-seeming creatures that glide from no- 
where into nothing — Arab, Lascar, Pacific 
Islander, Chinky, Hindoo, and so on, each 
carrying his own perfume. You know, too, 
the streets of plunging hoof and horn that 
cross and re-cross the waterways, the gaunt 
chimneys that stick their derisive tongues to 
the skies. You know the cobbly courts, the 
bestrewn alleys, through which at night gas- 
jets timidly peer ; and the mephitic glooms and 
silences of the dockside. You know these 
things, and I need not attempt to illuminate 
them for you. 



LISSON GROVE 169 

But you do not know that in this place there 
are creatures with the lust for life racing in 
their veins ; creatures hot for the moment and 
its carnival ; children of delicate graces ; young 
hearts asking only that they may be happy 
for their hour. You do not know that there 
are girls on these raw edges of London to 
whom silks and wine and song are things to 
be desired but never experienced. But there 
are ; and surely you will agree that any young 
thing, moving in that dank daylight, that 
devilish darkness, is fully justified in taking 
her moments of gaiety as and when she may. 
There may be callow minds that cry " No " ; 
and for them I have no answer. There are 
minds to which the repulsive — such as Poplar 
High Street — is supremely beautiful, and to 
whom anything frankly human is indelicate, 
if not ugly. You need, however, to be a 
futurist to discover ecstatic beauty in the torn 
wastes of tiles, the groupings of iron and 
stone, and the nightmare of chimney-stacks 
and gas-works. Barking Road may be a thing 
to fire the trained imagination, and so may be 
the subtle tones of flame and shade in the 
byways, and the airy tracery of the Great 
Eastern Railway arches. But these crazy 
things only touch those who do not live 
among them : who comfortably wake and sleep 
and eat in Hampstead and Streatham. The 
beauty which neither time nor tears can fade 
is hardly to be come by east of Aldgate 
Pump ; if you look for it there and think that 
you find it, I may tell you that you are a 



170 A MISERABLE NIGHT 

poseur ; you may take your seat at a St . 
John's Wood breakfast -table, and stay there. 

Ethel was not a futurist. She was just a 
girl. The Pool at night never shook her to 
wonder. Mast-head, smoke-stack, creaking 
crane, evoked nothing responsive in her. If 
she desired beauty at all, it was the beauty 
of the chocolate-box or the biscuit -tin. Where- 
fore Poplar and Limehouse were a weariness 
to her. She was a malcontent ; and one can 
hardly blame her, for she must have been a 
girl of girls. When she dreamed of happier 
things, which she did many times a week, and 
could not get them, she took the next best 
thing, she told me. A sound philosophy, you 
will agree. She flogged a jaded heart in the 
loud music-hall, the saloons of the dockside, 
and found some minutes' respite from the 
eternal grief of things in the arms of any 
salt -browned man who caught her fancy, 
until she discovered her financial value. And 
now cocaine was beginning to drag her mouth 
heavily down. 

It was a sad story, and, sitting there, in the 
cobwebby labyrinths of Lisson Street, I felt 
curiously chilled and tired. The lamp went 
suddenly out with a pop ; and we were 
in darkness for a few moments. Neither of 
us spoke. Then a bank of cloud raced toward 
the Great Central, and a full moon flung a 
sword of light straight through her one window. 
She got up and stood against it, a little 
theatrically, letting it beat upon her bruted 
bosom. She looked so small and fragile that 



LISSON GROVE 171 

I sought for something flippant to say ; but I 
could think of nothing. I sat there like a fool, 
rather cheerfully conscious that I was doing 
something I ought not to be doing. London 
was silent, and the moment, and the picture of 
Ethel englamoured by moonlight, reacted on 
my overwrought mood, and the air seemed 
tragic with portents. 

Then, without warning, her lip quivered, her 
face jumped, and she turned and flung herself 
across the low chair and collapsed in a tempest 
of sobs and hot tears. I hope this doesn't 
sound romantic, because it wasn't. I never 
know what to do with a crying woman, and 
I knew still less then. It was so unheralded 
that, for some moments, I still sat like a fool. 
Then I stretched a comforting hand, and mur- 
mured cheery nonsense, and after a while the 
tears ceased, and the key of the sobs fell lower 
and lower, and at last came silence and only 
the convulsive jerk of her shoulder. 

At about four o'clock she quite suddenly 
jumped up, patted me, and said she was a 
fool, but was often taken like that. And it 
was so ; for I found, at subsequent meetings, 
that, in the words of her friend, she could never 
be depended upon. Often I have sat with 
her since, in one or other of the lounges where 
there is a band, and she would be quite merry ; 
not stupidly or hysterically merry, but with 
the merriment of those with whom life goes 
reasonably well. She would sit and sip the 
one drink which the managements of these 
places give free to their girl habitues, and 



172 A MISERABLE NIGHT 

then, without the faintest foreshadowing, the 
storm would break, and she would fall on the 
nearest shoulder in a heart-breaking fit of 
weeping. The laughter had gone, and the light 
wit and the coarseness, and the thousand and 
one inconsequences and contradictions that 
make up the character of your Ethels, and 
Violets, and Rubys, and Ivys, and the others of 
that band of bruised butterflies. Only misery 
and tears remained. But after a few minutes 
of abandonment, she would suddenly recover 
herself, apologize to us, swear at herself, and 
give herself again to the coarse jest, the sharp 
laughter, and the advocaat. 

Well . . . that was my first acquaintance 
with Lisson Street ; but I went many times 
after that. I lent her books, for which she 
was grateful ; but I had to select them care- 
fully. For there was so much that she did 
not understand. Perhaps you know her 
counterpart— the ingenuous demi-mondaine, if 
such a collision of terms be allowed? The 
girls who know everything about the more 
universal aspects of human life, and nothing 
whatever about its daily concerns. If you 
don't, you will hardly believe that Ethel did 
not know that Fleet Street was anywhere near 
the Strand; that she did not know, in 1904, 
that Russia and Japan were at war ; that she 
did not know what grand opera was ; that 
she did not know that the House of Commons 
did not hold its debates in Westminster Abbey ? 
Yet so it was. She knew her job. She knew 
West India Dock and Lisson Street and 



LISSON GROVE 173 

Leicester Square; no more. But she liked 
the popular magazines, of which I was able 
to give her half a dozen every month, and 
she liked a few selected novelists. She liked, 
for some contradictory reason, James Lane 
Allen and Mrs. Croker and Anthony Hope. 
Humour she could not endure ; and often she 
asked me, with pained bewilderment, to inter- 
pret something in Punch. 

And " Ooooooooh ! " she would cry at the 
most obvious of remarks, as though something 
obscure had been suddenly illuminated for her. 
I told her once that some of the boys in one 
of the lounges were of the Army Flying 
Corps, and piloted airships and monoplanes. 
" Oooooh, do they? I wondered what they 
was— were, I mean. I seen a lot of 'em about 
in khaki. But ... I didn't know about 'em. 
I don't hear much lately, I been so hard up. 
Give me half a dollar, kid— do ! " 

I think together, in our own funny little 
ways, we helped one another. It was a poor, 
twisted road that we were both marching 
along in those days, and neither of us seemed 
to get any farther. But at Lisson Street there 
was always a welcome, sometimes good 
laughter and sometimes quick tears, whether 
I went with gift or empty-handed. Once, 
when I was feeling done to the world, I asked 
her for a pinch of cocaine. Her horror almost 
amused me. 

" Ooooooh ! Kid ! You don't want thet 
stuff. Cuh, don't you have that, silly devil ! 
Makes you awful miserable. For the Lord's 



174 A MISERABLE NIGHT 

sake, don't have it, kid! It's worse'n gin. 
It'll make you like me. It gets you all ways. 
Bucks you up, after a sniff or two, and you 
feel all right. Then, about a couple of hours 
later, you find yourself crying. Don't have 
it, kid ! Promise me ! " 

But whatever her mood, it was always a 
very definite mood. There was nothing of 
the insipid ; everything was sharp -flavoured. 
Her room was flooded either with gaiety or 
melancholy : the despairing gaiety of the 
abandoned, the keen melancholy of the Celt. 
She had that cold audacity of the town-bred 
Irish which enabled her to speak her mind 
without a suspicion of off ensiveness . She had, 
too, other traits, but I prefer not to speak 
of these lest, in getting them to paper, I lose 
their essential delicacy, so fragile and in- 
tangible were they. 

I lost her quite suddenly. I had not been 
to Lisson Street for some time, or to the 
brasserie where she usually sat and sipped her 
advocaat. But I went there one night, and 
found her friend, Minta. She was alone. I 
went over and jollied her, and asked where 
the Ethel-girl was. 

" Oh, I don't know ! " she snapped. " How 
should I ? " 

" But you must know," I insisted. " Where 
is she these days ? " 

" I don't know, I keep telling you ! Leave 
me alone, can't you?" 

" No. Not until you tell me where the 
Ethel -girl is." 



LISSON GROVE 175 

' Well, if you want to know, the Ethel - 
girl's out of it." 

"Out of it? How?" 

" Done herself in." 

"What?" 

" Cocaine. Overdose." 



A HAPPY NIGHT 
SURBITON AND BATTERSEA 



12 



A SUBURBAN NIGHT 

Oh, sweetly sad and sadly sweet, 

That rain-pearled night at Highbury/ 
The picture-theatre, off the street, 
That housed us from the lisping sleet, 
Is a white grave of dreams for me. 

Though smile and talk were all our part, 
Sorrow lay prone upon your heart 
That ?iever again our lips might meet, 
And never so softly fall the sleet 

In gay-lamped, lyric Highbury. 
Love made your lily face to shine, 
But oh, your cheek was salt to mine, 

As we walked home from Highbury / 

O starry street of shop and show, 
And was it thus long years ago? 
Was the full tale but waste and woe, 
And Love but doom in Highbury, 
My dusty, dreaming Highbury f 



A HAPPY NIGHT 

SURBITON AND BATTERSEA 

When I received the invitation to the whist - 
drive at Surbiton my first thought was, " Not 
likely ! " I had visions of a boring evening. 
I knew Surbiton. I knew its elegances and 
petty refinements. I knew its pathetic apings 
of Curzon Street and Grosvenor Square. I 
knew its extremely dull smartness of speech 
and behaviour. I foresaw that I should enjoy 
myself as much as I did at the Y.M.C.Aj. 
concert, where everybody sang refined songs 
and stopped the star from going on because 
he was about to sing " The Hymn to Venus," 
which was regarded as " a little amorous." 
The self-conscious waywardness, the deliberate 
Bohemianism of Surbiton, I said to myself, is 
not for me. I shall either overplay it or under- 
play it. Certainly I shall give offence if I 
am my normal self. For the Bohemianism 
of Surbiton, I continued, has very strict rules 
which nobody in Bohemia ever heard of, and 
you cannot be a Surbiton Bohemian until you 
have mastered those rules and learned how 
gracefully to transgress them. If I throw 

bread pellets at the girls, they will call me 

179 



i8o A HAPPY NIGHT 

unmannerly. If I don't they will call me stiff. 
You may have noticed that those pseudo- 
intellectuals who like to think themselves 
Bohemian are always terrified when they are 
brought up against anything that really is un- 
conventional. On the other hand, your true 
Bohemian is disgusted if anybody describes 
him by that word ; if there is one word that 
he detests more than Belgravia, it is Bohemia. 
No, I shall certainly not go. 

Surbiton . . . Surbiton. I repeated the 
name aloud, tasting its flavour. It has always 
had to me something brackish, something that 
fills my mind with grey pain and makes me 
yearn for my old toys. It is curious how the 
places and streets of London assume a 
character from one's own moods. All the 
big roads have a very sharp character of their 
own. If all other indications were lacking, 
one might know at once whether the place 
were Edgware Road or Old Ford Road, 
simply by the sounds and by the sweep of 
it. Pull down every house and shop, and still 
Oxford Street could never pass itself off as 
Barking Road. But they have, too, a message 
for you. I still believe that a black dog is 
waiting to maul me in Stepney Causeway. I 
still dance with delight down Holborn. Peck- 
ham Road still speaks to me of love. And 
Maida Vale always means music for me, music 
all the way. I had my first fright in Stepney 
Causeway. I first walked down Holborn when 
I had had a streak of luck. I first knew 
Peckham Road when first I loved. And I 



SURBITON AND BATTERSEA 181 

first made acquaintance with Maida Vale and 
its daintily naughty flats at the idiotic age of 
seventeen, when I was writing verses for com- 
posers at five shillings a time. They all lived 
in Maida Vale, and I spent many evenings 
in the music -rooms of those worn-out or 
budding composers and singers, who, with the 
Jews, have made this district their own ; so 
that Maida Vale smells always to me of violets 
and apple-blossom : it speaks April and May. 
The deep blue of its night skies is spangled 
with dancing stars. The very sweep and sway 
of the road to Kilburn and Cricklewood is an 
ecstasy, and the windows of the many mansions 
seem to shine from heaven, so aloof are they. 
Surbiton, I repeated. I shall certainly 
not go. I know it too well. Surbiton is 
one of those comfortable, solid places, and 
I loathe comfortable places. I always go to 
Hastings and avoid St. Leonards. I always 
go to Margate and fly from Eastbourne. I 
always go to Southend and give Knocke-sur- 
Mer a miss. I like Clacton. I detest Cromer. 
I love Camden Town. I hate Surbiton. 
Surbiton is very much like Hampstead, except 
that, while Hampstead is horrible for 362 days 
of the year, there are three days in the year 
when it is inhabitable. On Bank Holidays 
the simple-minded minor poet like myself can 
live in it. I was there last August Bank 
Holiday, and, flushed and fatigued with the 
full-blooded frolic, I had turned aside to " cool 
dahn " in Heath Street, when I ran against 
some highly respectable and intelligent friends. 



182 A HAPPY NIGHT 

'What?" they said, "you here to-day? 
Ah ! observing, I suppose ? Getting copy ? 
Or perhaps as a literary man you come here 
for Keats . . . Coleridge^ . . . and all that? " 

" No," I answered, " I come here for boat- 
swings. I come here to throw sticks at coco- 
nuts. I come here to buy ticklers to tickle 
the girls with. I come here for halfpenny 
skips. I come here for donkey rides. I do 
not come for Keats. I do not care a damn 
for Coleridge. I do not come to gloat about 
Turner or Constable or anybody else who lived 
at Hampstead a hundred years ago. I come 
here to enjoy myself— for roundabouts, cockles 
and whelks, steam -organs— which, after all, are 
the same thing as Keats or Coleridge . They're 
Life. So is Keats." 

Wherefore I felt determined that I could not 
and would not go to a whist-drive at Surbiton, 
when I could get the real thing in Upper 
Street, Islington. 

Then Georgie called for me at the office, 
and we went out to lunch. Georgie had sold 
a picture. He had five pounds in his pocket. 
We went to Maxim's and had lunch. Georgie 
insisted on sparkling Moselle, and we had two 
bottles, and three rounds of Cointreau triple 
sec. By that time it was too late to think 
of going back to work, so I took Georgie 
to tea at a literary club, and we talked. I 
then discovered in a panic that it was half- 
past six. The whist-drive was at eight, and 
I had yet to dine and get down to Surbiton. 
Georgie, by that subtle magnetism which he 



SURBITON AND BATTERSEA 183 

possesses, had drawn a bunch of the boys 
about him, and had induced them to make 
a night of it with him ; so we went to 
Simpson's to eat, and I left them at the table, 
very merry, and departed to Waterloo. Some- 
where, between lunch and dinner, I had un- 
consciously decided, you see, that I would go 
to Surbiton. I can't remember just when the 
change in my attitude took place ; but there 
it was. I went to Surbiton, feeling quite good 
and almost in love with Surbiton. 

The whist -drive was to be held in the local 
hall, and when I arrived cabs and motors 
were forming a queue. Each cab vomited 
some dainty arrangement in lace or black cloth . 
Everybody was "dressed." (I think I said 
that it was Surbiton.) Everybody was on best 
behaviour. Remembering the gang at Simp- 
son's, I felt rather a scab, but a glance in 
the mirror of the dressing-room reassured me. 
I recollected some beautiful words of Mr. 
Mark Sheridan's, " If I'm not clever, thank 
God, I'm clean." The other fellows in the 
dressing-room were things of beauty. Their 
public-school accent, with its vile mispro- 
nunciation of the English tongue, would have 
carried them into the inner circles of any 
European chancellery. I never heard any- 
thing so supernally affecting. I have heard 
many of our greatest actors and singers, but 
I have never heard so much music put into 
simple words, as, "I say, you fellers ! " 

Everybody was decent. Everybody, you felt 
sure, could be trusted to do the decent thing, 



1 84 A HAPPY NIGHT 

to do whatever was " done," and to leave un- 
done those things that were not " done," and, 
generally, to be a very decent sort. Their 
features were clean and firm ; they were well- 
tended. Their minds were clean. They 
talked clean ; and, if they did not display 
any marked signs of intelligence or imagina- 
tion, if they had not the largeness of person- 
ality for the noble and big things of life, you 
felt that at least they had not the bent for 
doing anything dirty. Altogether, a nice set, 
as insipid people mostly are : what are known 
in certain circles as Gentlemen. On one point 
I found myself in sympathy with them : they 
were a pleasure -loving lot. They were, indeed, 
almost hedonists, and I found no difficulty in 
liking them for this, while I find insuperable 
difficulty in liking the ascetic, the mean, or the 
cautious. 

The girls. . . . Well, they, too, were a 
decent sort. Not so decent as the boys, of 
course, because they were girls. They scanned 
one another a little too closely. They were 
too obviously anxious to please. They were 
too obviously out for the evening. Those who 
were of the at-home type simpered. They 
talked in italics. The outdoor type walked 
like horses. They looked unpleasant, too. I 
wonder why " Madge " or " Felice " or 
" Ermyntrude," or some other writer of 
toilet columns in the ladies' papers, doesn't 
tell her outdoor girl readers how hideous they 
look in evening frocks. Why don't they urge 
them not to uncover themselves? For the out- 



SURBITON AND BATTERSEA 185 

door girl has large hands and large arms, 
both of a beefy red. She has a face and neck 
tanned by sun and wind, and her ensemble, 
in a frock cut to the very edge of decency, 
shows you red hands and forearms, with a 
sharp dividing line where the white upper arm 
begins, and a raw face and neck, with the 
same definite line marking the beginning of 
white bosom and shoulders. The effect is 
ridiculous. It is also repulsive. I think they 
ought to know about it. 

The hall was tastefully decorated with white 
flowers and palms. There was a supper-room, 
which looked good. The prizes, arranged on 
a table by the platform, were elegant, well 
chosen, and of some value. I started at a 
table with an elderly matron, a very self-con- 
scious Fabian girl, and a rather bored-looking 
man of middle age, who seemed to be burst- 
ing to talk— which is the deadliest of sins at 
a Surbiton whist-drive. The whist that I play 
is the very worst whist that has ever been 
seen. I told my partner so, and she said, 
" Oh, really ! " and asked me if I had had 
any tennis yet. Then some one begged us to 
be seated, and, with much arrangement of silks 
and laces and wraps, we sat down and began 
to play whist. As I moved from table to 
table I made no fresh partners. They were 
differently dressed, but otherwise there was no 
distinction. They were a very decent 
sort. . . . 

After many hours we stopped playing whist, 
and broke up for chewing and chatting. The 



i86 A HAPPY NIGHT 

bored-looking man of middle age picked me 
up, and we took two stray girls in tow for 
wine and sandwiches. The manners at the 
supper-crush were elegance itself. The girls 
smoked cigarettes just a little too defiantly, 
but they were quite well-bred about it. A 
lot of well-bred witticisms floated around, with 
cool laughter and pretty smiles. A knot of 
girls with two boys talked somewhat decry- 
ingly of Shaw and Strindberg ; and one caught 
stray straws of talk about Nijinsky . . . 
Russian Ballet . . . Scriabine . . . Marinetti 
. . . Augustus John. Two girls were giving 
a concert at the Bechstein next week. Others 
were aiming at the Academy. Another had 
had a story accepted by the English Review. 
They were a very decent sort. 

The bored man plucked at my arm and 
suggested that we get rid of the girls, and 
go across to " The Railway " and have one. 
We did. In the lounge of " The Railway " he 
told me the one about the lady and the taxi. 
It was very good, but extremely ill-bred. He 
was a prominent local doctor, so I told him 
the one about the medical man on the panel, 
and about the Bishop who put gin in his 
whisky. Then he told me another . . . and 
another. He remembered the old days at the 
London. . . . He said he had had to go to 
this show because his boy and girl were there. 
Cards bored him to death, but he liked to 
be matey with the youngsters. Suppose we 
had just one more? 

We had just one more. From across the 



SURBITON AND BATTERSEA 187 

way came, very sweet and faint, the sound of 
laughter and young voices. Some one had' 
started a piano, and the Ballade in A Minor 
was wandering over Surbiton. I looked into 
my brandy -glass, and, as I am very young, 
I rather wanted to cry. I don't know why. 
It was just the mood . . . the soft night, 
Surbiton, young boys and girls, Chopin, Mar- 
tell. ... I said I had to catch an immediate 
train to Waterloo, and I drank up and bolted. 



The other Saturday morning I met a friend 
at Rule's. He said, " Laddie, doing anything 
to-night?" I said, "No; what's on?" 

He said : " Like to help your old uncle? " 

I said : " Stand on me." 

" Well, it's a little charity show. A Social 
at Battersea Town Hall. Some local club or 
tennis -party or some jolly old thing of that 
sort. All receipts to the local hospital. All 
the gang are going to do something — kind of 
informal, you know. I'm the Star. Yes, laddie, 
I have at last a shop, for one night only. My 
fee — seven -and -sixpence and tram-fares. All 
other services gratuitous. No platform. No 
auditorium. Just a little old sit-round, drink- 
ing limp coffee and eating anaemic pastry, and 
listening. Come?" 

I said I would, and we adventured along the 
dreary Wandsworth Road, down the evil- 
smelling Lavender Hill, into the strenuous 
endeavour of Clapham Junction. It was gay 
with lights and shoppers and parading 



188 A HAPPY NIGHT 

monkeys. Above us hung a pallid, frosty sky. 
No stars ; no moon ; but down in the streets, 
warmth and cheer and companionship. We 
called at the blazing, bustling " Falcon," which 
is much more like a railway-junction than the 
station itself, and did ourselves a little bit of 
good, as my professional friend put it. Then 
we mounted to the gas -lit room where the fun 
was to take place. We wandered down long, 
stark passages, seeking our door. We heard 
voices, but we saw no door. 

" Harold," said some one, " sometimes wish 
you wasn't quite such a fool." 

" What's the matter now, Freddie ? " asked 
A Voice. 

" Why, you know very well it's ten to eight, 
and you ain't even pulled the piano out." 

" Gaw ! Lucky you reminded me. Come 
on, old chew-the-fat, give us a hand with the 
musical -box." 

There were noises " off," from which it 
seemed that some one had put something on 
top of something else. There were noises of 
some one hitting a piece of wood with another 
piece of wood. 

Then " Damn ! " cried A Voice. " Steady 
on my feet, can't yeh? Bit more to the right. 
Whoa ! Up your end a bit. 'At's it. When 
was she tuned last? Give us a scale." 

Some one flourished, and then a bright door 
opened, and two young men in shirt-sleeves 
with tousled brows, appeared. 

" Laddie," cried my friend, dramatically, " is 
this the apartment for the Young People's 



SURBITON AND BATTERSEA 189 

Society In Connection With The Falcon Road 
Miss ?" 

" That's us ! " cried, I imagine, Freddie. 

" Then I am Victor Maulever." 

" Oh, step inside, won't you? Bit early, I'm 
'fraid. Mr. Diplock ain't here yet. But come 
in . We got a fire going, and it's sort of turning 
chilly out, eh? " 

We stepped in, and Freddie introduced us. 
" Flarold— this is Mr. Maulever, the actor. Mr. 
Maulever, may I introduce our sec't'ry, 
Mr. Worple— Mr. Harold Worple, I should 
say." 

Mr. Worple came forward and shook hands. 
" 'Scuse my shirt-sleeves, won't you, sir?" 

" Certainly, laddie, cer-tain-ly," said Victor, 
with that empressement which has earned him 
so many drinks in Maiden Lane. " Cer-tain-ly. 
And how are you ? " 

" Nicely, thanks," said Harold. " How's 
'self?" 

" So-so, just so-so. Now just tell me about 
your little affair, so I can get 'em fixed good 
and plenty before I start. What d'you think'll 
go best ; you know 'em better than I 
do ? Shakespeare— what ? Bransby Williams ? 
' Dream of Eugene Aram ' ? ' Kissing Cup's 
Race ' ? Imitations of Robey, Formby, 
Chirgwin— what ? " 

Harold pondered a moment. Then he had 
an inspiration. " Sort 'em up if I was you, 
sir. Sort 'em up. Then ev'body'll get some- 
thing they like, see?" 

We entered the clubroom where the Social 



ipo A HAPPY NIGHT 

was to be held— a large, lofty room, genial, 
clean, and well -lighted. The floor was bare, 
but a red rug before the leaping fire gave a 
touch of cosiness. Small tables were scattered 
everywhere ; draughts here, dominoes there, 
chess elsewhere, cards in other places. Chairs 
were distributed with a studied air of casual 
disorder. Newspapers littered a side-bench. 
The grand piano, by Cadenza of The 
Emporium, stood diagonally across the left 
centre, and on it lay the violin -case of Freddie, 
who told us, with modesty, that he " scraped 
nows and thens." Along the length of the 
farther wall stood a large, white-robed table, 
heaped with cofTee-urns, sandwiches, buns, 
cakes, biscuits, bananas, and other delicacies. 
All these arrangements were the joint work of 
Freddie and Harold. 

At five minutes to eight the company 
arrived. At first it trickled in by stray couples 
but later it swelled to a generous flood, each 
couple nodding in acknowledgment of the 
deprecatory greetings of the stewards : " Here 
we are again, what-oh?" and, in more pro- 
fessional tones : " Gentlemen's Room to the 
Right, Ladies' Room to the Left ! " 

Victor and myself stood by the fire, Victor 
receiving bashful but definitely admiring 
glances from the girls, for he is of the old 
school, and looks more like Sir Henry Irving 
even than Mr. H. B. Irving, except that he 
does not limp. For the first few minutes the 
atmosphere was cold. The boys obviously 
wanted to talk to Victor, but they seemed all 



SURBITON AND BATTERSEA 191 

too shy ; so I gave Victor the tip, and with his 
exquisite courtesy he moved over to a group 
of the boys and the girls and, with a bow, 
asked a girl with a baby face, that burnt 
delightfully red under his attention, if he might 
take a seat on that settee . In just a minute and 
a half, the thaw set in, and he had the company 
about him bubbling with laughter and excited 
comment. As other groups came in from the 
dressing-rooms they made at once for the 
centre of attraction, and soon Victor was the 
centre of a crowd that buzzed about him like 
bees about a flower, seeking the honey of 
laughter. I doubt if he was ever so much 
in the " spot " before. I could see him revel- 
ling in it. I could see him telling Rule's about 
it. But in the middle of his best story, Freddie 
bustled up. 

" Oh, 'scuse me, sir, but I forgot to tell you 
before. I said sort 'em up, but . . . you 
might just be careful, 'cos the Vicar's dropping 
in during the evening. I'll give you the word 
when he's here, so's you'll be sure to hand 'em 
something quiet. It's all right until he comes. 
Just give 'em anything you like." 

And Victor waved a faded hand, and said, 
" Righto, laddie, righto. I get you," and 
turned again to the blushing little girl, who 
certainly seemed now to be Quite The Lady 
in her manner of receiving his attentions. 
Under his expansive mood everybody soon 
knew everybody else, and all traces of stiffness 
vanished. The company was a little mixed, 
and it was inevitable that there should be de- 



192 A HAPPY NIGHT 

marcations of border, breed, and birth. Some 
were shop-assistants, some were mechanics, 
some were clerks, some were even Civil 
Servants ; and as all were Christians they were 
naturally hesitant about loving one another. 
But Victor broke down all barriers by his large 
humanity and universal appeal. 

Suddenly, there was a hammering on the 
floor, and a voice called, " Attention, please I " 
And then—" Duet for violin and piano : Miss 
Olive Craven and Mr. Fred Parslow." 

We broke into little groups, and settled our- 
selves. Then came a crash of chords from 
the piano, and a prolonged reiteration of the 
A while Freddie tuned. They set to work. I 
heard the opening bars, and I held my breath 
in dismay. They were going to play a 
Tchaikowsky Concerto. But the dismay 
was premature . They played ; both of 
them. I do not know whether Freddie 
was engaged to Olive, but there was • a 
marvellous sympathy uniting them ; and, 
though little technical flaws appeared here and 
there, the beauty of the work was brought 
right out. Freddie and Olive were musicians. 
It was a delicious quarter of an hour. They 
got a big handful of applause, and then Freddie 
asked : " Ready, sir? " and Victor said he was, 
and Freddie said, " What is it? " and conveyed 
the answer to the portly old fellow who seemed 
to be president. After a minute or so, during 
which the girls chattered and giggled and com- 
pared ribbons and flounces, he called again 
for silence, and a tremendous outburst of 



SURBITON AND BATTERSEA 193 

clapping and stamping followed his announce- 
ment : " Mr. Victor Maulever, the famous West 
End actor, will recite ' Who'll have a Blood 
Orange?' " 

Victor made good with his first three sen- 
tences. In the language of his profession, he 
got 'em with both hands. They rose at him. 
He had 'em stung to death. He did what he 
liked with 'em. The girls giggled and kicked 
little feet. They shamelessly broke into his 
periods with "Isn't he IT?" and he had to 
wait while the laughs went round. 

When he had finished he got such a hand as 
I'm sure he never had in the whole of his stage 
career. They wouldn't let him sit down. They 
would give him no rest ; he must go straight 
on and give more. So he gave them two 
more, including his impressions of George 
Robey, G. P. Huntley, Joe Elvin, R. G. 
Knowles, and Wilkie Bard singing " Little Grey 
Home in the West." 

Then the President appealed to the audience 
to let poor Mr. Maulever have a rest and a 
little refreshment ; and at once the girls rushed 
to the table and fought with one another for 
sandwiches and coffee and cakes with which 
they might minister to the exhausted Thespian. 
The boys did not get savage about this ; they 
seemed to share in the fun, and when new 
girl -arrivals came in, they were solemnly intro- 
duced to the star. " Oh, Mr. Maulever, may 
I introduce my friend, Miss Redgrove?" Miss 
Redgrove smiled becomingly, and Victor rose, 
bowed, extended his graceful hand, and said : 

13 



194 A HAPPY NIGHT 

" Delighted, Miss Redgrove ! " and Miss Red- 
grove said : " Pleased to meet you ! " And in 
reply to Victor's inquiry : " I hope you're 
well?" she said that she mustn't grumble. 

A few of the girls wore evening frocks ; 
others, with more limited means, contented 
themselves with Sunday frocks or delicately 
coloured robes that had been manoeuvred into 
something that showed enough white neck and 
bosom to be at once alluring and decorous. 
There was nothing of the plain or the dowdy. 
They were all out for enjoyment, and they 
meant to make the best of everything, them- 
selves included. Frills and fluffiness were the 
order. They were all darlings. 

A gentle raillery was the note of intercourse 
between girls and boys. One of the little girls, 
a typist, I gathered, in a mercantile office, whis- 
pered to her boy that Victor was A Love, and 
added that she always did like men best when 
they were old and had grey hair. They were 
so . . . kind of ... if he knew what she 
meant. She said she would most likely fall 
in love with a grey-haired man, and her boy 
said : " Yes, of course you would." Where- 
upon she told him not to be so sarcastic. 

The attitude of gentlemen to ladies was also 
delightful. Some of the gentlemen were guilty 
of bad manners, in the Surbiton sense of the 
word. That is to say, they did not all do what 
was " done," and they very frequently did 
things that were not " done " by Good People. 
But everything they did was inspired by a 
consideration for the comfort of others. They 



SURBITON AND BATTERSEA 195 

committed gaucheries, but the fount thereof 
was kindliness. 

The conversation was varied. Some talked 
frocks, some music, some picture-palaces, some 
odds-and-ends. Those who affected theatres 
stuck firmly to Victor, and lured him on to talk 
about the idols of the stage. The dear boy 
might have told them things ... he might 
have disillusioned their golden heads about 
certain actor -managers of whom he has had 
intimate experience ; but he didn't, and I 
rather liked him for it. While more recita- 
tions and more music went round, he told them 
heroic stories about their heroes. He told 
them strange stories and beautiful stories and 
funny stories ; but never, never disparaging 
stories . One saw their faces glow with wonder . 
Then the time came for him to work again. 
He certainly earned that seven-and-six. This 
time the Vicar was there, so he handed them 
" The Dream of Eugene Aram." 

Again he got 'em. The girls shivered and 
moved nearer to their boys . He got his horror 
in voice and face and gesture and pauses. 
There was perfect silence while he did it. 
There was perfect silence for some seconds 
afterwards. Then came a rain of clapping, 
and the Vicar walked across to him and shook 
him by the hand, showering warm compliments 
upon him, and trusting that he would be kind 
enough to come again. 

Then, while we drank coffee and handed 
cakes to the girls, the reverend gentleman stood 
on the rug before the fire and gave us an 



196 A HAPPY NIGHT 

informal address. It was all very bright and 
homely, and the merry twinkle in the old man's 
eye when he saw the cluster of girls about 
Victor told us that he was very much alive to 
this world. 

At half -past ten the meeting broke up, with 
a final effort by Victor in two of Albert 
Chevalier's songs. The girls pelted to the 
dressing-rooms and returned, robed for the 
street and radiant, and all anxious to shake 
hands and bid farewell to the Star. They 
literally danced round him, and fought to shake 
hands with him, and the boys fought with them. 
Then, when all had saluted him, each boy 
appropriated a girl. Those who were known 
tucked arms in arms and marched off. Those 
who were strangers approached deferentially, 
and said: "You got a friend, miss? If not 
. . . m'l see you home?" and were at once 
elected. 

Victor and the Vicar and the President and 
myself remained behind till the last, while 
Freddie and Harold " cleared up the mess," as 
they said. Then Victor winked at the two boys, 
and lured them to the passage. " Well, boys," 
he said, jingling his three half-crowns which 
had just been paid him, " what about it ? A 
short one at ' The Falcon '—what ? " 

They really blushed. The honour was too 
much. " Oh— really— well— very kind of you, 
Mr. Maulever, I'm sure." They stammered 
through their hot smiles, but they came along, 
and after the short one at " The Falcon " they 
lingered a moment. They appeared nervous. 



SURBITON AND BATTERSEA 197 

It seemed that they had something on their 
minds. Harold looked at Freddie and 
Freddie looked at Harold, and Freddie said 
emphatically: "You." So Harold, very rapidly, 
turned and said : 

" I was going t'say, Mr. Maulever— I mean, 
would you— ah— might I ask if you and your 
friend'd have another — with us?" He was 
obviously glad to get it over. 

Victor smiled. "Well, laddie, it's a cold 
night. Dammit, we will have another." 

So we did. As a matter of fact, we had 
three others ; and in the loud passage of " The 
Falcon " we parted with the lads, Who wrung 
Victor's hand, and said he'd given them a 
delightful evening, and they hoped he'd recite 
for their next Social, adding that he was a 
real sport. 

I saw Victor to his 'bus, and as he leaped 
aboard he said he had enjoyed himself. He 
turned half-way up the stairs to cry his 
customary valediction . 

" Si longtemps, old kiddo. Cling good and 
tight to the water-wagon ! " 



A WORKER'S NIGHT 
THE ISLE OF DOGS 



THE WORK CHILD 
I 

Fair flakes of wilding rose 

Entwine for Seventeen, 
With lovely leaves of violet 
That dares not live till fields forget 
The grey that dresl their green with snows, 

And grow from grev to green / 

And when the wreath is twining, 

Oh, prithee, have a care / 
Weave in no bloom of subtle smell; 
The simple ones she loves too well. 
Let violets on her neck lie shining, 

Wild rose in her hair. 

And bring her rose-winged fancies, 
From shadowy shoals of dream, 

To clothe her in this wistful hour, 

When girlhood steals fro?n bud to flower. 

Bring her the tunes of elfin dances, 
Bring her the faery Gleam / 



// 



At the worlds gate she stands, 

Silent and very still j 
And lone as that one star that lights 
The delicate dusk of April nights. 
Oh, let love bind her holy hands, 

And fetter her from ill! 

Her tumbled tresses cling 

A down her like a veil. 
And cheek and curls as sweetly chime 
As verses with a rounding rhyme. 
Surely there is not anything 

So valiant and so frail. 

In faith and without fear, 
She brings to a rude throng, 

At war with beauty and with truth, 

The wonder of her blossomy youth. 

And faith shall wither to a sneer, 
And need shall silence song. 



Ill 

Her soul is a soft flame, 

Set in a world of grey. 
Help her, O Life, to keep its shrine 
That her white window's vigilant sign 
May pierce the tangled mists oj shame, 

Where we have lost our way! 

So linger at this day, 

My little maid serene! 
Or, since the dancing feet must go, 
Take Childhood with you still, and so 
Live in a year-worn world, but stay 

For ever Seventeen ! 



A WORKER'S NIGHT 

THE ISLE OF DOGS 

I AM not of those who share the prevailing 
opinions of The Isle of Dogs : I do not see 
it as a haunt of greyness and distress. To 
the informed mind it is full and passionate. 
Every one o',f its streets is a sharp -flavoured 
adventure. Where others find insipidity I find 
salt and fire. Its shapes and sounds and 
silences and colours have allured me from first 
acquaintance. For here, remember, are the 
Millwall Docks, and here, too, is Cubitt Town. 
... Of course, like all adorable things, it 
has faults. I am ready to confess that 
the cheap mind, which finds Beauty only 
in that loathly quality called Refinement, 
will suffer many pains by a sojourn in 
its byways. It will fill them with ashen 
despair. In the old jolly days it was filthy; 
it was full of perils, smelly, insanitary, crumb- 
ling ; but at least one could live in it. To- 
day it has been taken in hand by those 
remote Authorities who make life miserable 
for us . It is reasonably clean ; it is secure ; 
the tumbling cottages have been razed, and 



202 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

artisans' dwellings have arisen in their 
stead. Its highways— Glengall Road, East 
Ferry Road, Manchester Road — are but rows 
of uniform cottages, with pathetically small 
front gardens and frowzy " backs," which, 
throughout the week, flap dismally with the 
most intimate items of their households' under- 
wear. Its horizon is a few grotto-like dust- 
shoots, decorated with old bottles and 
condensed milk tins. 

It is, I admit, the ugly step-child of 
parishes ; but, then, I love all ugly step- 
children. It is gauche and ridiculous. It 
sprawls. It is permanently overhung with 
mist. It has all the virtues of the London 
County Council, and it is very nearly unin- 
habitable. Very nearly uninhabitable . . . 
but not quite. 

For here are many thousands of homes, and 
where a thousand homes are gathered together 
there shall you find prayer and beauty. Yes, 
my genteel lambs of Kensington, in this region 
of ashpits and waterways and broken ships 
and dry canals are girls and garlands and all 
the old lovely things that help the human heart 
to float and flow along its winding courses. 
If you inform the palate of the mind by 
flavours, then life in Queen's Gate must be 
a round of labour and lassitude, and, from 
the rich faces that pass you in the Isle of 
Dogs, you know that it must always be the 
time of roses there. Stand by the crazy bridge 
at the gates of West India Dock, at six o'clock, 
when, through the lilac dusks, comes that flock 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 203 

of chattering magpies— the little work -girls— 
and see if I am not right. 

And the colour. . . . There is nothing in 
the world like it for depth and glamour. I 
know no evenings so tender as those that 
gather about the Island : at once heartsome 
and subdued. The colour of street and sky 
and water, sprinkled with a million timid stars, 
is an ecstasy. You cannot name it. You 
see it first as blue, then as purple, then lilac, 
rose, silver. The clouds that flank the high- 
shouldered buildings and chimneys share in 
these subtle changes, and shift and shift from 
definite hues to some haunting scheme that 
was never seen in any colourman's catalogue. 

On the night when I took Georgie round 
the Island a hard, clear frost was abroad. 
The skies glittered with steady stars. The 
streets seemed strangely wide and frank, clear- 
cut, and definite. A fat-faced moon lighted 
them. The waters were swift and limpid, 
flecked with bold light. The gay public-house 
at the Dock gates shone sharp, like a cut gem. 
Georgie had never toured the Island before, 
and he enjoyed it thoroughly. As we stood 
on the shuddering bridge the clear night spread 
such a stillness over the place that you could 
almost hear a goods train shunt ; and we 
stood there watching the berthing of a big 
P. & O. for many pensive minutes. 

By the way, you ought to know Georgie ; 
he is a London character. Perhaps you do, 
for he has thousands of acquaintances. He 
knows all that there is to know about London 



204 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

— or, at least, the real London, by which phrase 
I exclude the foreign quarters and the Isle of 
Dogs. These he does not regard as part of 
London. His acquaintance among waiters 
alone is a matter for wonder. At odd times 
you may meet him in a bar with a stranger, 
an impressive -looking personage who, you con- 
jecture, is an attache of a foreign Embassy. 
But no ; you do him an injustice ; he is 
greater than that . Georgie introduces you with 
a histrionic flourish — 

' This is Mr. Burke— young Tommy Burke. 
This is Carlo, of Romano's." Or, " This is 
young Tommy. This is Frank from the Corn- 
hill Chop House, or Henry from Simpson's, 
or Enrico from Frascati's, or Jules from 
Maxim's." 

I believe that Georgie knows more about 
food and feeding than any man in London. 
I don't mean that he could seriously compete 
with Lieutenant-Colonel Newnham Davis. He 
couldn't draw up a little dinner for you at the 
Ritz or Claridge's or Dieudonn^'s. But, then, 
here again he shows his prejudices ; for he 
doesn't regard a dinner at the Ritz or Claridge's 
as anything to do with eating. His is the 
quieter sphere ; but he has made it his own . 
There is something uncanny about his know- 
ledge in this direction. He knows where you 
can get a meal at two o'clock in the morning, 
and he can tell you exactly what you will get. 
He can tell you in an instant what is the 
prime dish at any obscure little eating-house 
and the precise moment at which it is on the 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 205 

table. He knows the best house for cabbage, 
and the house to be avoided if you are think- 
ing of potatoes. He knows where to go for 
sausage and mashed, and he can reel off a 
number of places which must be avoided when 
their haricot mutton is on. He knows when 
the boiled beef is most a la mode at Wilkin- 
son's, when the pudding at the " Cheshire 
Cheese " is just so, and when the undercut at 
Simpson's is most to be desired. You meet 
him, say, on Tuesday, and, in course of con- 
versation, you wonder where to lunch. " Tues- 
day," he will murmur, " Tuesday. What d'you 
fancy? It's fowl-and-bacon day at 'The 
Mitre.' That's always good. Or it's stewed- 
steak day at ' The Old Bull,' near the Bank ; 
beautiful steak ; done to a turn at one-fifteen. 
Or it's curry day at the Oriental place in 
Holborn, if you like curries. Or it's chop 
toad-in-the-hole day at Salter's ; ready at two 
o'clock. The one in Strand's the best. But 
don't go sharp at two. Wait till about two- 
twenty. The batter ain't quite what it should 
be at two sharp ; but just after that it's perfect. 
Perfect, my boy ! " 

We crossed the bridge to a running accom- 
paniment from Georgie about the times he 
had had in the old days before I was born 
or thought of— he is always flinging this in 
my face. Motor-'buses were roaring through 
the long, empty streets, carrying loads of 
labourers from the docks to their northern 
homes, or work -girls from the northern 
factories to their homes in the Island. The 



206 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

little, softly lighted toy and sweetstuff shops 
gleamed upon us out of the greyness, and the 
tins of hot saveloys and baked apples, which 
the hawkers were offering, smelt appetizing. 
From tiny stalls outside the sweetstuff shops 
you may still purchase those luscious delicacies 
of your childhood which seem to have dis- 
appeared from every other quarter of London. 
I mean the toffee -apple about which, if you 
remember, Vesta Victoria used to sing so 
alluringly. 

I have two friends residing here — one at 
Folly Wall and one in Havana Street. I 
decided that we would call on the latter, so 
Georgie stopped at " The Regent " and took 
in a bottle of Red Seal for my friend and a 
little drop of port for the missus—" just by 
way," as he explained, " of being matey." My 
friend, a gateman at one of the dock stations, 
had just got home, and was sitting down 
to his tea. There is no doubt that the house- 
wives of the Island know how to prepare their 
old men's tea. In nearly every house in this 
district you will find, at about six or seven 
o'clock, in the living-room of the establishment, 
a good old hot stew going, or tripe and onions, 
or fish and potatoes, or a meat-pudding ; and 
this, washed down with a pint of tea, is good 
enough hunting for any human. Old Johnnie 
comes from the docks in his dirty working 
clothes ; but before ever he ventures to sit 
down to table he goes into the scullery, strips, 
and has what he calls a " slosh down," after- 
wards reappearing in a clean print shirt and 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 207 

serge trousers. Then, in this comfortable 
attire, he attacks whatever the missus has got 
for him, and studies the evening paper, to 
ascertain, firstly, what the political (i.e. labour) 
situation is, and, secondly, what's good for to- 
morrow's big race, for Johnnie, quite inno- 
cently, likes to have a shilling on all the 
classics— the Lincoln, the Cambridgeshire, the 
Caesarewitch, the Gold Cup, City and Sub., 
the Oaks and the Derby, and so on. 

After his meal he shaves and puts on a 
collar. Sometimes he will take the missus to 
the pictures, or, if it is Saturday, he will go 
marketing with her in Poplar ; or in the 
summer for a moonlight sail on the Thames 
steamers. Other nights he attends his slate 
club, or his union, or drops in at one or other 
of the cheery bars on the Island, to meet his 
pals and talk shop. The Isle of Dogs, I may 
tell you, is a happy hunting-ground for all 
those unhappy creatures who can find no con- 
genial society in their own circles : I mean 
superior Socialists, Christian workers, Oxford 
and Cambridge settlement workers, and the 
immature intellectuals. There are literally 
dozens and dozens of churches and chapels on 
the Island, and dozens of halls and meeting - 
places where lectures are given. The former 
do not capture Johnnie, but the latter do, and 
he will often wash and brush up of an evening 
to hear some young boy from Oxford deliver 
a thoroughly uninformed exposition of Karl 
Marx or Nietzsche. The Island is particu- 
larly happy in being so frequently patronized 



208 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

by those half-baked ladies and gentlemen, the 
Fabians, who have all the vices of the middle 
classes, and — what is more terrible — all the 
virtues of the middle classes. 

The majority of Socialists, if you observe, 
are young people of the well-to-do middle 
classes. They embraced the blue-serge god, 
not from any conviction, not from any 
sense of comradeship with their overworked 
and underpaid fellows, but because Socialism 
gave them an excuse for escape from their 
petty home life and pettier etiquettes. As 
Socialists they can have a good time, they 
can go where they choose, do as they choose, 
and come home at what hour they choose with- 
out fearing the wrath of that curious figure 
whom they name The Pater. They have 
merely to explain that they are Socialists, and 
their set say, " Oh . . . Socialists . . . yes, 
of course." Socialism opens to them the 
golden gates of that Paradise, Bohemia. The 
freedom of the city is thus presented to them ; 
and they have found it so convenient and so 
inexpensive that they have adopted Socialism 
in their thousands. But observe them in the 
company of the horny-handed, the roughshod, 
and the ill-spoken ; they are either ill at ease 
or frankly patronizing. They are Bohemians 
among aristocrats and aristocrats among 
Bohemians. 

Johnnie is just beginning to be noted at 
their meetings as a debater of some import- 
ance. In fact, after the lecture, he will rise 
and deliver questions so shrewd and pene- 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 209 

trating that the young folk of Sidcup and 
Blackheath and Hampstead have found it a 
saving to their personal dignity to give him 
a seat on the platform, where, of course, he 
is not only rendered harmless to them but is 
an encouragement to other sons of the soil in 
the audience. 

It is in the region of the Island that most 
of the battles take place between organized 
labour and the apostles of free labour. Let 
there be any industrial trouble of any kind, 
and down upon the district swoop dozens of 
fussy futilitarians, to argue, exhort, bully, and 
agitate generally. Fabians, Social Democrats, 
Clarionettes, Syndicalists, Extremists, Arbitra- 
tors, Union leaders — gaily they trip along and 
take charge of the hapless workers, until the 
poor fellows or girls are hustled this way and 
that, driven, coerced, commanded, and counter- 
commanded that, in desperation, they take 
refuge, one and all, in the nearest bar. Then 
the Fabians, the Social Democrats, the 
Clarionettes, the Syndicalists, the Extremists, 
the Arbitrators, and the Union leaders return 
to Blackheath and Sidcup and Bedford Park, 
crying that it is useless to attempt to help 
the poor : they won't be helped ; they are 
hopeless dipsomaniacs. 

Here were organized those Unemployed 
marches which made our streets so cheery a 
few years ago. I once joined Johnnie on a 
tramp with one of these regiments, and it was 
the most spiritless march I have ever been 
in. The men didn't want to march. It was 

14 



210 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

the Social Service darlings who wanted to form 
them into a pretty procession, and lead them 
all round London as actual proof of the Good 
that was being done among the Right People. 
We started at nine o'clock on a typically 
London morning. The day was neither cold 
nor warm, neither light nor dark. The sky 
was an even stretch of watery grey, and the 
faces that passed us were not kindly. Mostly 
they suggested impaired digestions or guilty 
consciences. We had a guard of honour of 
about ten hefty constables, and for us, as for 
the great ones of the town, the traffic was 
held up that we might pass . Among the crowd 
our appointed petitioners, with labelled col- 
lecting-boxes, worked with subdued zeal, and 
above the rumble of the 'buses and the honk- 
honk of motors and the frivolous tinkle of 
hansoms rose their harsh, insistent rattle. Now 
and again a gust of wind would send a dozen 
separate swirls of dust into our eyes. People 
stared at us much as one stares at an Edgware 
Road penny -museum show. We were not 
men. We were a procession of the Unem- 
ployed: An Event. We were a jolly lot. 
Most of us stared at the ground or the next 
man's back ; only a few gazed defiantly 
around. None talked. Possibly a few were 
thinking, and if any of them were imaginative, 
that slow shuffle might have suggested a 
funeral march of hopes and fears. There 
was a stillness about it that was unpleasant ; 
a certain sickness in the air. I think the crowd 
must have wondered what we were going to 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 211 

do next. You may punch an Englishman's 
nose, and heal the affront with apologies and 
a drink. You may call him a liar, and smooth 
over the incident by the same means. You 
may take bread out of his mouth,, and still he 
may be pacified. But when you touch his 
home and the bread of the missus and the kids, 
you are touching something sacred and thereby 
inviting disaster ; and I think the crowd 
was anticipating some concerted assault. As 
a matter of fact, we were the tamest lot 
of protesters you ever saw. I don't think 
any of us realized that he had anything 
sacred . 

As we reached Piccadilly Circus the watery 
grey suddenly split, and through the ragged 
hole the sun began to peer : a pale sun that 
might have been out all night. It streamed 
weakly upon us, showing up our dismal 
clothes, glancing off the polished rails of the 
motor -'buses and the sleek surfaces of the 
hansoms. But it gave us no heart. Our 
escorts deigned us an occasional glance, but 
they had a soft job ; we were not gnashing 
our teeth or singing the " Marseillaise " or 
' The Red Flag." People stared . . . and 
stared. The long black snake of our 
procession threaded disconsolately into 
Knightsbridge. Hardly a word or a sign 
of interest escaped us. On the whole four 
hours' march there was but one laugh. That 
came from a fellow on the near side, who 
thought he'd found a cigar by the kerb, and 
fell and hurt his knee in the effort to secure 



212 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

his treasure— a discoloured chip of wood. 
Curiously enough, we didn't laugh. It was 
he who saw the fine comedy of the incident. 

We debouched into Church Street, so to 
Notting Hill, and up the wretched Bayswater 
Road to Oxford Street. The sun was then— 
at one o'clock— shining with a rich splendour. 
The roadway blazed. Under the shop-blinds, 
which drooped forward like heavy lids over 
the tired eyes of the windows, little crowds 
from Streatham and Kentish Town were 
shopping. They stared at us. Through the 
frippery of this market-place we reached the 
homelier atmosphere of Holborn. The rattle 
of our boxes had grown apace, and we made 
small bets among ourselves as to what the 
total takings would be. I was thankful when 
the march or solemn walk was ended. For 
days afterwards my ears rang with the in- 
cessant clat-clat-clatter of those boxes, and for 
days afterwards I was haunted by those faces 
that stared at us, and then turned to stare at 
us, and then called other faces to stare at 
us. Nobody in the whole march troubled us. 
Nobody cursed us ; nobody had a kind word 
for us. They just gave us their pennies, 
because we had been " got up " for that 
procession by those dear, hard-working friends 
of theirs. On our return, and after the very 
thin croute-au-pot that was served out to us, 
we were addressed on the subject of our dis- 
contents. I forget what they were, if, indeed, 
I ever knew, for I had joined the march only 
as Johnnie's guest. 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 213 

Whether Johnnie really knows or cares any- 
thing about economics I cannot say. I only 
know that I don't like him in that part. I 
like him best sitting round his open kitchen- 
range, piled with coke, or sitting in the four- 
ale bar of " The Griffin." For what he does 
know a tremendous lot about is human nature ; 
only he does not know that he knows it. His 
knowledge drops out of him, casually, in side 
remarks . At his post on the docks he observes 
not only white human nature but black and 
yellow and brown, and he knows how to deal 
with it all. He can calm a squabble among 
Asiatics of varying colour and creed, when 
everybody else is helpless ; not by strength 
of arm or position or character, but simply 
because he appreciates the subtle differences 
of human natures, and because he understands 
the needs and troubles of the occasion. 

" Yes," he has said to me sometimes, on 
my asking whether he didn't find his night- 
watch rather lonely — " yes, I suppose some 
chaps would find it lonely. But not me. If 
you're a philosopher, you ain't ever lonely. 
Another thing — there's too much to do, old 
son. Night-watchman at a docks ain't the 
same thing as night-watchman at the road- 
up. Notterbitterfit. Thieves, my boy. 
Wouldn't think they'd venture into a place 
the size of ours, perhaps ? Don't they, though ? 
And, my word, if I catch 'em at it ! Not big 
burglars, of course, but the small pilfering 
lot. Get in during the day, they do, and hide 
behind bales and in odd corners. Then they 



2i 4 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

come out when it's dark and nose around, and 
their little fingers, in spite of their Catechism, 
start right away at picking and stealing. . . . 
Funny lot, these jolly Lascars. If I was 
manager of a music-hall and I wanted a real 
good star turn— something fresh— I'd stand at 
my gate and bag the crew of a Dai Nippon, 
just as they come off, and then bung 'em on 
just as they are, and let 'em sing and dance 
just as they do when they've drawn their pay. 
That'd be a turn, old son. I bet that'd be a 
goer. Something your West End public ain't 
ever seen ; something that'd knock spots off 
'em and make their little fleshes creep. Of 
course it looks fiercer'n it really is. All that 
there chanting and chucking knives about is 
only, as you might say, ceremonial. But if 
they happen to come off at two o'clock of a 
foggy winter morning— my word, it don't do to 
be caught bending then ! But lucky for me I 
know most of 'em. And they know me. And 
even if they're away for three months on end, 
next time they're back at West India they 
bring some little ' love gift ' for the bloke at 
the gate— that's me. Often I've had to patch 
'em up at odd times, after they've had a thick 
night with the boys and have to join their 
boats. Sometimes one of 'em tumbles into 
the dock half an hour before she sails, with a 
smashed lip and that kind of air about him 
that tells you he can see a dock jam full of 
shipping and is trying to sort 'em out and 
find his little show. Of course, as a watchman 
and a man, I kind of sympathize. We've 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 215 

all done it one time or another. I remember 
one night ..." ' 

And when Johnnie remembers, that is the 
time to drink up and have another, for once 
he starts yarning he is not easily stopped. 
Wonderful anecdotes he has to relate, too ; not 
perhaps brilliant stories, or even stories with 
a point of any kind, but stories brimful of 
atmosphere, stories salt of the sea or scented 
with exotic bloom. They begin, perhaps, 
" Once, off Rangoon," or " I remember, a big 
night in Honolulu, or Mauritius, or Malabar, 
or Trinidad." Before the warning voice cries, 
" Time, gentermen ! " you have circled the 
globe a dozen times under the spell of 
Johnnie's rememberings. 

You may catch him any night of the week, 
and find him ready to yarn, save on Saturdays. 
Saturday night is always dedicated to the 
missus and to shopping in Poplar or Blackwall. 
Shopping on Saturday nights in these districts 
is no mere domestic function : it is a festival, an 
event. Johnnie washes and puts on his second- 
best suit, and then he and the missus depart 
from the Island, he bearing a large straw 
marketing bag, she carrying a string-bag and 
one of those natty stout -paper bags given away 
by greengrocers and milliners. As soon as 
the 'bus has tossed them into Salmon Lane, 
off Commercial Road, they begin to revel. 

Salmon Lane on a Saturday night is very 
much like any other shopping centre in the 
more humane quarters of London. Shops and 
stalls blaze and roar with endeavour. The 



216 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

shops, by reason of their more respectable 
standing, affect to despise stalls, but when it 
comes to competition it is usually stalls first 
and shops hanging round the gate. The place 
reeks of naphtha, human flesh, bad language, 
and good nature. Newly -killed rabbits, with 
their interiors shamelessly displayed, suspend 
themselves around the stalls, while their pro- 
prietors work joyfully with a chopper and a 
lean-bladed knife. Your earnest shopper is 
never abroad before nine o'clock in the evening, 
and many of them have to await the still riper 
hours when Bill shall have yielded up his 
wages. Old ladies of the locality are here in 
plenty, doubtfully fingering the pieces of meat 
which smother the slabs of the butchers' shops. 
Little Elsie is here, too, buying for a family 
of motherless brothers and sisters with the few 
shillings which Dad has doled out. Who 
knows so well as Little Elsie the exact spend- 
ing value of twopence-halfpenny ? Observe her 
as she lays in her Sunday gorge. Two 
penn'orth of " pieces " from the butcher's to 
begin with (for twopence you get a bagful 
of oddments of meat, trimmings from various 
joints, good nourishing bones, bits of suet, and, 
if the assistant thinks you have nice eyes, he 
will throw in some skirt). Then to the large 
greengrocer's shop for a penn'orth of " specks " 
(spotted or otherwise damaged fruit, and vege- 
tables of every kind). Of this three penn'orth 
the most valuable item is the bones, for these, 
with a bit of carrot and potato and onion, will 
make a pot of soup sufficient in itself to feed 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 217 

the kiddies for two days. Then, at the baker's, 
you get a market basket full of stale bread for 
twopence, and, seeing it's for Sunday, you 
spend another penny and get five stale cakes. 
At the grocer's, two ounces of tea, two ounces 
of margarine, and a penn'orth of scraps from 
the bacon counter for Dad's breakfast. And 
there you have a refection for the gods. 

Observe also the pale young man who lodges 
in some remote garret by Limehouse Hole. He 
has but a room, and his landlady declines 
the responsibility of " doing for " him. He 
must, therefore, do his own shopping, and he 
does it about as badly as it can be done. His 
demeanour suggests a babe among wolves, 
innocence menaced by the wiles of Babylon ; 
and sometimes motherly old dears audibly 
express pity at his helplessness, which flusters 
him still more, so that he leaves his change on 
the counter. . . . 

The road is a black gorge, rent with 
dancing flame. The public -house lamps flare 
with a jovial welcome for the jaded shopper, 
and every moment its doors flap open, and 
fling their fire of joy on the already over- 
charged air. Between the stalls parade the 
youth and beauty, making appointments for 
the second house at the Poplar Hippodrome, or 
assignations for Sunday evening. 

As the stalls clear out the stock so grows the 
vociferousness of their proprietors, and soon 
the ear becomes deadened by the striving rush 
of sound. Every stall and shop has its wide- 
mouthed laureate, singing its present glories 
and adding* lustre to its latest triumphs. 



218 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

" I'll take any price yeh like, price yeh like ! 
Comerlong, comerlong, Ma ! This is the shop 
that does the biz. Buy-buy-buy-uy ! " 

' Walk up, ladies, don't be shy. Look at 
these legs. Look at 'em. Don't keep looking 
at 'em, though. Buy 'em. Buy 'em. Sooner 
you buy 'em sooner I can get 'ome and 'ave 
my little bath. Come along, ladies ; it's a 
dirty night, but thank God I got good lodgings, 
and I hope you got the same. Buy-buy-buy ! " 

" 'Ere's yer lovely bernanas. Fourer penny. 
Pick 'em out where yeh like ! " 

In one ear a butcher yells a madrigal con- 
cerning his little shoulders. In the other a 
fruit merchant demands to know whether, in 
all your nacherel, you ever see anything like 
his melons. Then a yard or so behind you an 
organ and cornet take up their stand and add 
" Tipperary " to the swelling symphony. But 
human ears can receive so much, and only so 
much, sound ; and clapping your hands over 
your ears, you seek the chaste seclusion, for 
a few minutes, of the saloon of " The Black 
Boy," or one of the many fried-fish bars of 
the Lane. 

Still later in the evening the noise increases, 
for then the stalls are anxious to clear out 
their stock at any old price. The wise wife — 
and Johnnie's missus is one — waits until this 
hour before making her large purchases. For 
now excellent joints and rabbits and other 
trifles are put up for auction. The laureates 
are wonderful fellows, many of them, I imagine, 
decayed music-hall men. A good man in this 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 219 

line makes a very decent thing out of it. The 
usual remuneration is about eight or ten 
shillings for the night and whatever beer they 
want. And if you are shouting for nearly six 
hours in the heavy-laden air of Salmon Lane, 
you want plenty of beer and you earn all you 
get. They have a spontaneous wit about them 
that only the Cockney possesses. Try to take 
a rise out of one of them, and you will be sadly 
plucked. Theirs is a Falstaman humour — large 
and clustering : no fine strokes, but huge, rich- 
coloured sweeps. It is useless to attempt 
subtleties in the roar of a Saturday night. 
What you have to aim at is the obvious — but 
with a twist ; something that will go home at 
once ; something that can be yelled or, if the 
spirit moves you, sung. It is, in a word, the 
humour of the Crowd. 

At about eleven o'clock, the laureate, duly 
refreshed, will mount on the outside counter, 
where he can easily reach the rows of joints. 
Around him gathers the crowd of housewives, 
ready for the auction. He takes the first — a 
hefty leg of mutton. 

" Nah then ! " he cries challengingly, " nah 
then ! Just stop shooting yer marth at the 
OOlans for a bit, and look at this 'ere bit o' 
meat. Meat was what I said," with a wither- 
ing glance at the rival establishment across 
the Lane, where another laureate is addressing 
another crowd. " Meat, mother, meat. If yer 
don't want Meat, then it ain't no use comin' 
'ere. If yer wants a cut orf an animal what 
come from Orstralia or Noo Zealand, then it 



220 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

ain't no use comin' 'ere. Over the road's where 
they got them. They got joints over there 
what come from the Anty-Podeys, and they 
ain't paid their boat-passage yet. No, my gels, 
this what I got 'ere is Meat. None of yer 
carvings orf a cow what looks like a fiddle- 
case on trestles. You— sir — just cast yer eye 
over that. Carry that 'ome to the missus, and 
she'll let yeh stay out till a quarter to ten, and 
yeh'll never find a button orf yer weskit long 
as yeh live. That's the sort o' meat to turn the 
kiddies into sojers and sailors. Nah then — 
what say to six-and-a-arf ? " 

He fondles the joint much as one would a 
babe in long clothes, dandling it, patting it, 
stroking it, exhibiting it, while the price comes 
steadily down from six-and-a-half to six, five, 
four-and-a-half, and finally is knocked down 
at four. Often a prime-looking joint will go 
as low as twopence a pound, and the smaller 
stuff is practically given away when half-past 
twelve is striking. 

It is the same with the other shops — green- 
grocery, fish, and fruit. All is, so far as 
possible, cleared out before closing time, and 
only enough is held in reserve to supply that 
large army of Sunday morning shoppers who 
are unable to shop on Saturday night owing 
to Bill's festivities. 



That is one worker's night. But there are 
others. There are those workers whose nights 
are not domestic, and who live in the common 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 221 

lodging-houses and shelters which are to be 
found in every district in London. There are 
two off Mayfair. There are any number 
around Belgravia. Seven Dials, of course, is 
full of them, for there lodge the Covent Garden 
porters and other early birds. In these houses 
you will find members of all-night trades that 
you have probably never thought of before. 
I met in a Blackwall Salvation Army Shelter 
a man who looks out from a high tower, some- 
where down Thames, all night. He starts at 
ten o'clock at night, and comes off at six, when 
he goes home to his lodging-house to bed. I 
have never yet been able to glean from him 
whose tower it is he looks from, or what he 
looks out for. Then there are those exciting 
people, the scavengers, who clean our streets 
while we sleep, with hose -pipe and cart -brush ; 
the printers, who run off our newspapers ; the 
sewer-men, who do dirty work underground ; 
railwaymen, night -porters, and gentlemen 
whose occupation is not mentioned among the 
discreet. 

The Salvation Army Shelters are very 
popular among the lodging-house patrons, 
for you get good value there for very little 
money, and, by paying weekly, instead of 
nightly, you get reductions and a better- 
appointed dormitory. I know many street 
hawkers who have lived for years at one 
Shelter, and would not think of using a common 
lodging-house. The most populous quarter for 
this latter class of house is Duval Street, Spital- 
fields. At one time the reputation of this street 



222 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

was most noisome ; indeed, it was officially 
known as the worst street in London. It holds 
a record for suicides, and, I imagine, for 
murders. It was associated in some vague 
way with that elusive personality, Jack the 
Ripper ; and the shadow of that association has 
hung over it for ever, blighting it in every 
possible way. To-day it is but a very narrow, 
dirty, ill-lit street of common lodging-houses 
within the meaning of the Act, and, though it 
is by no means so gay and devilish as it is 
supposed to have been of old, they do say that 
the police still descend first on Duval Street 
in cases of local murder where the culprit has, 
as the newspapers say, made good his escape. 
I do not recommend it as a pleasure-jaunt for 
ladies or for the funny and fastidious folk of 
Bayswater. They would suffer terribly, I fear. 
The talk of the people would lash them like 
whips ; the laughter would sear like hot irons. 
The noises bursting through the gratings from 
the underground cellars would be like a 
chastisement on the naked flesh, and shame and 
smarting and fear would grip them. The 
glances of the men would sting like scorpions. 
The glances of the women would bite like 
fangs. For these reasons, while I do not 
recommend it, I think a visit would do them 
good ; it would purify their spotty little minds 
with pity and terror. For I think Duval Street 
stands easily first as one of the affrighting 
streets of London. There is not the least 
danger or disorder ; but the tradition has given 
it an atmosphere of these things. Here are 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 223 

gathered all the most unhappy wrecks of 
London — victims and apostles of vice and 
crime. The tramps doss here : men who 
have walked from the marches of Wales 
or from the Tweed border, begging their 
food by the way. Their clothes hang from 
them. Their flesh is often caked with dirt. 
They do not smell sweet. Their manners 
are crude ; I think they must all have studied 
Guides to Good Society. Their language is 
limited and inexpressive. They spit when and 
where they will. Some of them writhe in a 
manner so suggestive as to give you the itch. 
This writhe is known as the Spitalfields Crawl. 
There is a story of a constable who was on 
night duty near the doors of one of the doss 
establishments, when a local doctor passed him. 
" Say," said the doctor, with a chuckle, " you're 
standing rather close, aren't you? Want to 
take something away with you?" "Not 
exactly that, sir ; but it's lonely round here for 
the night stretch, and, somehow, it's kind of 
company if I can feel the little beggars drop- 
ping on my helmet." 

In this street you are on the very edge of 
the civilized world. All are outcasts, even 
among their own kind. All are ready to die, 
and too sick even to go to the trouble of doing 
it. They have no hope, and, therefore, they 
have no fear. They are just down and out. 
All the ugly misery of all the ages is collected 
here in essence, and from it the atmosphere 
is charged ; an atmosphere more horrible than 
any that I know : worse than that of China- 



224 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

town, worse than that of Shadwell. These are 
merely insidious and menacing, but Duval 
Street is painful. 

It was here that I had the nearest approach 
to an adventure that I have ever had in 
London. I was sitting in the common kitchen 
of one of the houses which was conspicuously 
labelled on its outer whitewashed lamp — 

GOOD BEDS 

For Men Only 

Fourpence 

The notice, however, was but the usual farcical 
compliance with a law which nobody regards 
and which nobody executes. Women were 
there in plenty — mostly old, unkempt women, 
wearing but a bodice and skirt and boots. The 
kitchen was a bare, blue-washed apartment, 
the floor sanded, with a long wooden table 
and two or three wooden forms. A generous 
fire roared up a wide chimney. The air was 
thick with fumes of pipes that had been 
replenished with " old soldiers " from West 
End gutters. Suddenly a girl came in with an 
old man. I looked at her with some interest 
because she was young, with copper-coloured 
hair that strayed about her face with all the 
profusion of an autumn sunset. She was the 
only youthful -looking thing in the place, bar 
myself. I looked at her with rather excited 
interest because she was very drunk. She 
called the old man Dad. A few of the men 
greeted him. One or two nodded to the girl. 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 225 

" 'Lo, Luba. Bin on the randy? " The women 
looked at her, not curiously, or with com- 
passion or disgust, but cursorily. I fancied 
from certain incipient movements, that she 
was about to be violently bilious ; but she 
wasn't. We were sitting in silence when she 
came in. The silence continued. Nobody 
moved, nobody offered to make way. Dad 
swore at a huge scrofulous tramp, and kneed 
him a little aside from the fire. The tramp 
slipped from the edge of the form, but made 
no rebuke. Dad sat down and left Luba to 
herself. She swayed perilously for a moment, 
and then flopped weakly to the form on which 
I sat. The man I was with leaned across me. 

" 'Ad a rough time in the box, Luba? " 

Luba nodded feebly. Her mouth sagged 
open ; her eyes drooped ; her head rolled. 

" I 'eard abaht it," he went on. " Hunky 
Bottles see a Star wi' your pickcher in. And 
the old man's questions. Put you through it, 
din' 'e?" 

Again Luba nodded. The next moment she 
seemed to repent the nod, for she flared up and 
snapped : " Oh, shut up, for Christ's sake, 
cancher? Give any one the fair pip, you do. 
Ain't I answered enough damsilly questions 
from ev'body without you? Oo's got a fag? " 

I had, so I gave her one. She fumbled 
with it, trying to light it with a match held 
about three inches from it. Finally, I lit it 
for her, and she seemed to see me for the 
first time. She looked at me, at once shiftily 
and sharply. Her eyes narrowed. Suspicion 

IS 



226 A WORKER'S NIGHT 

leaped into her face, and she seemed to shrink 
into herself like a tortoise into its shell. " Oo's 
'e? " she demanded of my mate. 

" 'E's all right. Oner the boys. Chuck 
knows 'im." 

Then the match burnt her fingers, and she 
swore weak explosive oaths, filthier than any 
I have heard from a bookmaker. She lisped, 
and there was a suggestion in her accent of 
East Prussia or Western Russia. Her face was 
permanently reddened by alcohol. The skin 
was coarse, almost scaly, and her whole person 
sagged abominably. She wore no corsets, but 
her green frock was of an artful shade to 
match her brassy hair. Her hat was new and 
jaunty and challenging. 

" Tell you what," she said, turning from me, 
and seeming to wake up ; " tell you what I'd 

like to do to that old counsel. I'd like to " 

And here she poured forth a string of sugges- 
tions so disgusting that I cannot even convey 
them by euphemism. Her mouth was a sewer. 
The air about us stunk with her talk. When 
she had finished, my mate again leaned across 
me, and asked in a hollow whisper, like the 
friction of sand-paper — 

" 'Ere — Luba— tell us. Why d'you go back 
on Billie, eh? " 

Luba made an expressive gesture with her 
fingers in his face, and that was the only answer 
he received ; for she suddenly noticed me 
again, and, without another word, she dipped 
her hand to her bosom and pulled out a naked 
knife of the bowie pattern and twisted it under 



THE ISLE OF DOGS 227 

my nose. With the nervous instinct of the 
moment, I dodged back ; but it followed me. 

" No monkey -tricks with me, dear ! See ? 
Else you'll know what. See? " 

I was turning to my friend, in an appeal 
for intervention, when, quite as suddenly as 
the knife was drawn, it disappeared, for Luba 
overbalanced because of the gin that was in 
her, and slipped from the form. Between us, 
we picked her up, replaced her, and tucked 
the knife into its sheath. Whereupon she at 
once got up, and said she was off. For some 
reason she went through an obscure ritual of 
solemnly pulling my ear and slapping my face. 
Then she slithered across the room, fell up the 
stair into the passage, and disappeared into 
the caverns of gloom beyond the door. When 
she had gone, some one said, " Daddy — Luba's 
gone ! " 

In a flash Daddy leaped from the form, 
snarled something inarticulate, fell up the same 
stair, and went babbling and yelling after 
Luba. Some one came and shoved a fuzzy 
head through the door, asking lazily, 
"Whassup?" "Luba's gone." "Oh!" 

I wondered vaguely if it was a nightmare ; if 
I had gone mad ; or if other people had gone 
mad. I don't know now what it all meant. 
I only know that the girl was the Crown's 
principal witness in a now notorious murder 
case. My ear still burns. 



A CHARITABLE NIGHT 
EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH 



POOR 

From jail he sought her, and he found 
A darkened house, a darkened street, 
A shrilly sky that screamed of sleet, 

And from The Lane quick gusts of sound. 

He mocked at life that men call sweet. 
He went and wiped it out in beer — 
" Well, dammit, why should I stick here, 

By a dark house hi a dark street? 1 '' 

For he and his but serve defeat. 

For kings they gather gems and gola, 
And life for them, when all is told, 

Is a dark house in a dark street. 



A CHARITABLE NIGHT 

EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH 

Charity . . . the most nauseous of the vir- 
tues, the practice of which degrades both giver 
and receiver. The practice of Charity brings 
you into the limelight ; it elevates you to 
friendship with the Almighty ; you feel that 
you are a colleague of the Saviour. It springs 
from Pity, the most unclean of all human emo- 
tions . It is not akin to love ; it is akin to 
contempt. To be pitied is to be in the last 
stages of spiritual degradation. You cannot 
pity anything on your own level, for Pity im- 
plies an assumption of superiority. You cannot 
be pitied by your friends and equals, only by 
your self -elected superiors. Let us see Pity 
at work in London. . . . 

As I lounged some miles east of Aldgate 
Pump, an old song of love and lovers and 
human kindliness was softly ringing in my 
head, and it still haunted me as I slid like a 
phantom into that low -lit causeway that slinks 
from a crashing road to the dark wastes of 
waters beyond. At the far end a brutal black 

building broke the sky-line. A few windows 

231 



232 A CHARITABLE NIGHT 

were thinly lit with gas. I climbed the stone 
steps, hollowed by many feet, and stood in 
the entrance hall. 

Then, as it seemed from far away, I heard 
an insistent murmur, like the breaking of dis- 
tant surf. I gazed around and speculated. 
In the bare brick wall was a narrow, high door. 
With the instinct of the journalist, I opened 
it. The puzzle was explained. It was the 
Dining Hall of the Metropolitan Orphanage, 
and the children were at their seven o'clock 
supper. From the cathedral-like calm of the 
vestibule, I passed into an atmosphere billow- 
ing with the flutter of some five hundred 
small tongues. Under the pendant circles of 
gas-jets were ranged twelve long, narrow tables 
packed with children talking and eating with 
no sense of any speed-limit. On the one side 
were boys in cruelly ugly brown suits, and on 
the other side, little girls from seven to fifteen 
in frocks of some dark material with a thin 
froth of lace at neck and wrists and coarse, 
clean pinafores. Each table was attended by 
a matron, who served out the dry bread and 
hot milk to the prefects, who carried the basins 
up and down the tables as deftly as Mr. Paul 
Cinquevalli. Everywhere was a prospect of 
raw faces and figures, which Charity had 
deliberately made as uncomely as possible by 
clownish garb and simple toilet. The children 
ate hungrily, and the place was full of the 
spirit of childhood, an adulterated spirit. The 
noise leaped and swelled on all sides in an 
exultant joy of itself, but if here and there a 



EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH 233 

jet of jolly laughter shot from the stream, there 
were glances from the matrons. 

The hall was one of wide spaces, pierced at 
intervals by the mouths of bleak, stark corri- 
dors. The air of it was limp and heavy with 
the smell of food. Polished beams ran below 
the roof, pretending to uphold it, and massive 
columns of painted stone flung themselves 
aggressively here and there, and thought they 
were supporting a small gallery. Outside a 
full moon shone, but it filtered through the 
cheap, half -toned glass of the windows with a 
quality of pale lilac. Here and there a window 
of stained glass stabbed the brick wall with 
passionate colour. The moral atmosphere sug- 
gested nut -foods and proteid values. 

At half-past seven a sharp bell rang, and 
with much rumbling and manoeuvring of forms, 
the children stood stiffly up, faced round, and, 
as a shabby piano tinkled a melody, they sang 
grace, somewhat in this fashion : — 

To Go doo give sus dailyb read 

Dour thankful song we raise-se, 

Sand prayth at he who send susf ood, 

Dwillf ill lour reart swithp raise, Zaaaamen. 

Then a wave of young faces rolled upwards 
to the balcony, where stood a grey-haired, 
grey-bearded, spectacled figure. It was one 
of the honorary managers. The children stood 
to attention like birds before a snake. One 
almost expected to hear them sing " God bless 
the squire and his relations." . . . The 
Gentleman was well-tailored, and apart from 



234 A CHARITABLE NIGHT 

his habiliments there was, in every line of his 
figure, that which suggested solidity, responsi- 
bility, and the substantial virtues. I have seen 
him at Committee meetings of various chari- 
table enterprises ; himself, duplicated again 
and again. One charitable worker is always 
exactly like the other, allowing for differences 
of sex. They are of one type, with one 
manner, and — I feel sure — with one idea. I 
am certain that were you to ask twenty mem- 
bers of a Charity committee for opinions on 
aviation, Swedenborgism, the Royal Academy, 
and Little Tich, each would express the same 
views in the same words and with the same 
gestures. 

This Gentleman was of the City class ; he 
carried an air of sleekness. Clearly he was 
a worthy citizen, a man who had Got On, 
and had now abandoned himself to this most 
odious of vices. And there he stood, in a 
lilac light, splashed with voluptuous crim- 
sons and purples, dispensing Charity to the 
little ones before him whose souls were of hills 
and the sea. . . . He began to address them. 
It appeared that the Orphanage had received, 
that very morning, forty more children ; and 
he wished to observe how unnecessary it was 
for him to say with what pleasure this had 
been done. Many thousands of children now 
holding exalted positions in banks and the Civil 
Service could look to them as to their father, in 
the eighty or more years of the School's life, 
and he was proud to feel that his efforts were 
producing such Fine Healthy Young Citizens. 



EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH 235 

The children knew — did they not? — that they 
had a Good Home, with loving guardians who 
would give them the most careful training 
suited to their position in life. They were 
clothed, maintained, and drilled, as concerned 
their bodies ; and, as concerned their souls, 
they had the habits of Industry and Frugality 
inculcated into them, and they were guided 
in the paths of Religion and Virtue. They 
had good plain food, suited to their position in 
life, and healthy exercise in the way of Manly 
Sports and Ladylike Recreations. He quoted 
texts from the Scriptures, about the sight of 
the Widow touching those chords which vibrate 
sympathetically in all of us, and a lot of stuff 
about a Cup of Cold Water and These Little 
Ones. He exuded self -content. 

He went on to remark that the hazardous 
occupations of Modern Industry had, by their 
many mischances, stripped innumerable families 
of their heads, and reduced them to a condition 
of the most deplorable. He desired to remind 
them that the class to which they belonged was 
not the Very Poor of the gutters, but the 
Respectable Poor who would not stoop to re- 
ceive the aid doled out by the State . No ; they 
were not Gutter Children, BUT, at the same 
time, the training they received was not such 
as to create any distaste among them for the 
humblest employments of Honest Industry, 
suitable to their position in life. He redeemed 
the objects interested in his exertions from the 
immoralities of the Very Poor, while teaching 
them to respect their virtues, and to do their 



236 A CHARITABLE NIGHT 

duty in that station of life to which it had 
pleased God to call them. 

(The little objects seemed to appreciate this, 
for they applauded with some spirit, on prompt- 
ing from the matrons.) 

He went on to suggest, with stodgy jocu- 
larity, that among them was possibly a Prime 
Minister of 1955 — think of Pitt — and perhaps 
a Lord Kitchener. He spoke in terms of the 
richest enthusiasm of the fostering of the Manly 
Qualities and the military drill — such a Fine 
Thing for the Lads ; and he urged them to 
figure to themselves that, even if they did not 
rise to great heights, they might still achieve 
greatness by doing their duty at office desk, or 
in factory, loom, or farmyard, and so adding 
to the lustre of their Native Land — a land, he 
would say, in which they had so great a part. 

(Here the children cheered, seemingly with 
no intent of irony.) He added that, in his 
opinion, kind hearts were, if he might so put 
it, more than coronets. 

The Gentleman smiled amiably. He 
nourished no tiny doubt that he was doing the 
right thing. He believed that Christ would 
be pleased with him for turning out boys and 
girls of fourteen, half-educated, mentally and 
socially, to spend their lives in dingy offices 
in dingy alleys of the City. There was no 
humbug here ; impossible for a moment to 
doubt his sincerity. He had a childlike faith 
in his Great Work. He was, as he annually 
insisted, with painful poverty of epithet, en- 
gaged in Philanthropic Work, alleviating the 



EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH 237 

Distresses of the Respectable Poor and 
ameliorating Social Conditions Generally. So 
he trained his children until he trained them 
into desk or farm machines ; trained them so 
that their souls were starved, driven in on them- 
selves, and there stifled, and at last eaten away 
by the canker of their murky routine. 

I looked at those children as they stood 
before me. I looked at their bright, clear 
faces, they eyes wonder-wide, their clean brows 
alert for knowledge, hungry for life and its 
beauty. Despite their hideous clothes, they 
were the poetry of the world : all that is young 
and fresh and lovely. Then I thought of them 
five years hence, their minds larded with a 
Sound Commercial Education, tramping the 
streets of the City from nine o'clock in the 
morning until six o'clock in the evening, living 
in an atmosphere of intellectual vacuity, their 
ardent temperaments fled, their souls no longer 
desiring beauty. I felt a little sick. 

But The Gentleman. . . . The Gentleman 
stood there in a lilac light, and took unction 
unto himself. He smiled benignly, a smile 
of sincere pleasure. Then he called the 
children to attention while he read to them a 
prayer of St. Chrysostom, which he thought 
most suitable to their position in life. A ring 
of gas-jets above his head hovered like an 
aureole. 



I do wish that something could somehow be 
done to restrain the Benevolent. We are so 



238 A CHARITABLE NIGHT 

fond, as a nation, of patronizing that if we 
have nothing immediately at hand to patronize, 
we must needs go out into the highways and 
hedges and bring in anything we can find, 
any old thing, so long as we can patronize it. 
I have often thought of starting a League (I 
believe it would be immensely popular) for 
The Suppression of Social Service. The fussy, 
incompetent men and women who thrust them- 
selves forward for that work are usually the 
last people who should rightly meddle with it. 
They either perform it from a sense of duty, or 
what they themselves call The Social Con- 
science (the most nauseous kind of bene- 
volence), or they play with it because it is 
Something To Do. Always their work is dis- 
counted by personal vanity. I like the 
Fabians : they are funny without being vulgar. 
But these Social Servants and their Crusades 
for Pure and Holy Living Among Work-Girls 
are merely fatuous and vulgar when they are 
not deliberately insulting. Can you conceive 
a more bitter mind than that which calls a 
girl of the streets a Fallen Sister? Yet that is 
what these people have done ; they have 
labelled a house with the device of The Mid- 
night Crusade for the Reclamation of our 
Fallen Sisters ; and they expect self-respecting 
girls of that profession to enter it. . . . 

I once attended one of these shows in a 
North London slum. The people responsible 
for it have the impudence to send women- 
scouts to the West End thoroughfares at eleven 
o'clock every night, there to interfere with these 



EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH 239 

girls, to thrust their attentions upon them, and, 
if possible, lure them away to a service of 
song — Brief, Bright, and Brotherly. It was 
a bitter place in a narrow street. The street 
was gay and loud with humanity, only at its 
centre was a dark and forbidding door, reticent 
and inhuman. There was no sign of good- 
fellowship here ; no warm touch of the flesh. 
It was as brutal as justice ; it seemed to have 
builded itself on that most horrible of all texts : 
" Be just before you are generous" 

I went in at an early hour, about half-past 
ten, and only two victims had then been 
secured. The place stunk of Comic Cuts and 
practical Christianity. In the main room was 
a thin fire, as skimpy as though it had been 
lit by a spinster, as, I suppose, it had. There 
was a bare deal table. The seating accommo- 
dation was cane chairs, which I hate ; they 
always remind me of the Band of Hope classes 
I was compelled to attend as a child. They 
suggest something stale and cheesy, something 
as squalid as the charity they serve. On a 
corner table was a battered urn and a number 
of earthenware cups, with many plates of thick, 
greasy bread-and-butter ; just the right fare 
to offer a girl who has put away several 
benedictines and brandies. The room chilled 
me. Place, people, appointments, even the 
name— Midnight Crusade for the Reclamation 
of our Fallen Sisters — smacked of everything 
that is most ugly. Smugness and super-piety 
were in the place . The women — I mean, ladies — 
who manage the place, were the kind of women 



240 A CHARITABLE NIGHT 

I have seen at the Palace when Gaby is on. 
(For you will note that Gaby does not attract 
the men ; it is not they who pack tne Palace 
nightly to see her powder her legs and bosom. 
They may be there, but most of them are at 
the bar. If you look at the circle and stalls, 
they are full of elderly, hard women, with 
dominant eyebrows, leering through the un- 
dressing process, and moistening their lips as 
Gaby appears in her semi -nakedness.) 

The walls of the big bedroom were adorned 
with florid texts, tastefully framed. It was 
a room of many beds, each enclosed in a 
cubicle. The beds were hard, covered with 
coarse sheets. If I were a Fallen Brother, I 
hardly think they would have tempted me from 
a life of ease. And there were rules. . . . 
Oh, how I loathe rules ! I loathed them 
as a child at school. I loathed drill, and I 
loathed compulsory games, and I loathed all 
laws that were made without purpose. There 
were long printed lists of Rules in this place 
framed, and hung in each room. You can 
never believe how many things a Fallen Sister 
may not do. Certain rules are, of course, 
essential ; but the pedagogic mind, once started 
on law-making, can never stop ; and it is 
usually the pedagogic type of mind, with the 
lust for correction, that goes in for Charity. 
Why may not the girls talk in certain roomis ? 
Why may they not read anything but the books 
provided ? Why may they not talk in bed ? 
Why must they fold their bed-clothes in such- 
and-such an exact way? Why must they not 



EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH 241 

descend from the bedroom as and when they 
are dressed? Why must they let the Superior 
read their letters ? And why, oh, why are these 
places run by white-faced men and elderly, 
hard women ? 

I have written, I fear, rather flippantly on 
this topic ; but that is only because I dare not 
trust myself to be serious. I realize as much 
as any one that the life is a shameful life, and 
all that sort of thing ; but I boil with indigna- 
tion at the hundred shamefulnesses which these 
charity-mongers heap upon defenceless girls 
who, in a weak moment, have sought their pro- 
tection. If you know anything about the matter, 
you will know that these girls have in their 
little souls an almost savage flame of self- 
respect which burns with splendour before the 
bleak, miserable flame of Organized Charity. 
If I spoke my mind on the subject, this 
page would blaze with fury . . . and you 
would smile. 



But amid all this welter of misdirected en- 
deavour, there is just one organized charity for 
which I should like to say a word ; and that 
is, The Salvation Army. I do not refer to its 
religious activities so much as to its social work 
as represented in the excellent Shelters which 
have been opened in various districts. There 
is one in Whitechapel Road, which is the 
identical building where General Booth first 
started a small weekly mission service which 
was afterwards known all over the world as The 

16 



242 A CHARITABLE NIGHT 

Salvation Army. There is one in Hoxton. 
There is one — a large one— in Blackfriars Road. 
And there are others wherever they may be 
most needed. 

The doors open at five o'clock every evening. 
The Shelter, mark you, is not precisely a 
Charity. The men have to pay. Here is 
shown the excellent understanding of the 
psychology of the people which the University 
Socialist misses. You cannot get hold of 
people by offering them something for 
nothing ; but you can get hold of them 
by tens of thousands by offering them some- 
thing good at a low price. For a halfpenny 
the Salvation Army offers them tea, coffee, 
cocoa, or soup, with bread-and-butter, cake, 
or pudding. All this food is cooked and pre- 
pared at the Islington headquarters, and the 
great furnaces in the kitchens of the Shelters 
are roaring night and day for the purpose of 
warming-up the food, heating the Shelter, and 
serving the drying -rooms, where the men can 
hang their wet clothes. 

A spotlessly clean bed is offered for three- 
pence a night, which includes use of bath- 
room, lavatory, and washhouse. The wash- 
house is in very great demand on wet nights 
by those who have been working out of doors, 
and by those who wish to wash their under- 
clothes, etc. 

In addition to this, the men have the service 
of the Army orderlies, in attention at table and 
in " calling " in the morning. The staff is at 
work all night, either attending new-comers 



EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH 243 

or going round with the various " calls," which, 
as some of the guests are market porters, are 
for unearthly hours, such as half -past three or 
four o'clock. The Shelters are patronized 
by many " regulars " — flower-sellers, pedlars, 
Covent Garden or Billingsgate odd men, etc.— 
who lodge with them by the week, sometimes 
by the year. Lights are officially out at half- 
past nine, but of course the orderly is on 
duty at the door until eight o'clock the follow- 
ing morning, and no stranger who wants food 
and bed is refused. He is asked for the three- 
pence and for the halfpenny for his food, but 
if he cannot produce these he has but to ask 
for the Brigadier, and, if he is a genuine case, 
he is at once taken in. 

Every Saturday night at half-past eleven 
certain of the orderlies, supplied with tickets, 
go out, and to any hungry, homeless wanderer 
they give a ticket with directions to the Shelter. 
These Saturday night tickets entitle him, if he 
chooses to accept them, to bath, breakfast, bed, 
and the Sunday service. 

Further, the Shelter acts as employment 
agency, and, once having found their man, 
the first step towards helping him is to awaken 
in him the latent sense of responsibility. The 
quickest way is to find him work, and this they 
do ; and, once their efforts show results, they 
never lose sight of him. 

Many heartbreaking cases go by the 
orderly's box at the door, and I would like to 
set some of those young Oxford philanthropists 
who write pamphlets or articles in The New 



244 A CHARITABLE NIGHT 

Age on social subjects by the door for a night. 
I think they would learn a lot of things they 
never knew before. Often, at two or three 
o'clock in the morning, the scouts will bring 
in a bundle of rain -sodden rags that hardly 
looks as if it could ever have been a man. 
'How can you deal scientifically or religiously 
with that? 

You can't. But the rank and file of The 
Salvation Army, with its almost uncanny know- 
ledge of men, has found a better, happier way. 
I have spent many nights in various of their 
Shelters, and I should like to put on record 
the fine spirit which I have found prevailing 
there. It is a spirit of camaraderie. In other 
charitable institutions you will find timidity, 
the cowed manner, sometimes symptoms of 
actual fear. But never at The Salvation Army. 
There every new-comer is a pal, until he is 
proved to be unworthy of that name. There is 
no suspicion, no underhanded questioning, no 
brow-beating : things which I have never 
found absent from any other organized charity. 

The Salvation Army method is food, warmth, 
mateyness ; and their answer to their critics, 
and their reward, is the sturdy, respectable 
artisan who comes along a few months later 
to shake hands with them and give his own 
services in helping them in their work. 



Far away West, through the exultant 
glamour of theatre and restaurant London, 
through the solid, melancholic greys of Bays- 



EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH 245 

water, you find a little warm corner called 
Shepherd's Bush. You find also Notting Dale, 
where the bad burglars live, but we will talk 
of that in another chapter. Back of Shepherd's 
Bush is a glorious slum, madly lit, uncouth, and 
entirely wonderful. 

To Shepherd's bush I went one evening. I 
went to fairyland. I went to tell stories and 
to lead music-hall choruses. No ; not at the 
Shepherd's Bush Empire, but at a dirty little 
corrugated hall in a locked byway. Some time 
ago, the usual charitably minded person, find- 
ing time hang heavy on her hands, or having 
some private grief which she desired to forget 
in bustle and activity, started a movement for 
giving children happy evenings. I have not 
been to one of the centres, and I am sure I 
should not like to go. I dislike seeing children 
disciplined in their play. Children do not need 
to be taught to play. Games which are not 
spontaneous are as much a task as enforced 
lessons. I have been a child myself. The 
people who run charities, I think, never have 
been. . . . However . . . 

This Shepherd's Bush enterprise was an 
entirely private affair. The idea was based 
on the original inception, and much improved. 
At these organized meetings the children are 
forced to go through antics which, three hun- 
dred years ago, were a perfectly natural 
expression of the joy of life. These antics 
were called morris dances ; they were mad, 
vulgar, joyous abandonment to the mood of the 
moment ; just as the dances performed by little 



246 A CHARITABLE NIGHT 

gutter-arabs and factory-girls around street 
organs are an abandonment to the mood of 
to-day's moment. But the elderly spinsters 
have found that what was vulgar three hundred 
years ago is artistic to-day ; or if it isn't they 
will make it so. Why on earth a child should 
have to dance round a maypole just because 
children danced round a maypole centuries ago, 
I cannot understand. To-day, the morris 
dance is completely self-conscious, stiff, and 
ugly. The self -developed dance of the little 
girl at the organ is a thing of beauty, because 
it is a quite definite expression of something 
which the child feels ; it follows no convention, 
it changes measure at fancy, it regards nothing 
but its own rapture. . . . The morris dance 
isn't. 

So, at the hall to which I went, the children 
were allowed to play exactly as and when they 
liked. Any child could come from anywhere, 
and bring other children. There was a piano, 
and some one was always in attendance to 
play whatever might be required by the 
children. If they wanted " The Cubanola 
Glide," or " Down in Jungle-Town," or " In 
the Shadows," they got it, or anything else 
they might choose. Toys of all kinds were on 
hand— dolls, engines, railways, dolls'-houses, 
little cooking-stoves, brick puzzles, regiments 
of soldiers, picture-books, and, indeed, every- 
thing that a child could think of. 

When I arrived I tripped over the threshold 
of the narrow entrance, and fell into a warmly 
lighted room, where the meetings of some local 



EAST WEST, NORTH, SOUTH 247 

Committee were usually held. All chairs had 
been cleared to the wall, and the large central 
space was littered with troops of glad girls 
and toddlers from the stark streets around. 
Instead of teaching the children to play, the 
management here set the children to play by 
themselves and set elder children to attend 
them. Great was the fun. Great was the 
noise. On a little dai's at the end, coffee and 
sweet cakes were going, but there was no rush. 
When the kiddies wanted a cake they went up 
and asked for it ; but for the most part they 
were immersed in that subdued, serious excite- 
ment which means that games are really being 
enjoyed. All of the attendants were girls of 12 
or 13, of that sweet age between childhood and 
flapperhood, when girls are at their loveliest, 
with short frocks that dance at every delicate 
step, and with unconcealed glories of hair 
golden or dusky ; all morning light and melody 
and fearlessness, not yet realizing that they are 
women. Many of them, shabby and underfed 
as they were, were really lovely girls, their 
beauty shining through their rags with an 
almost religious radiance, as to move you to 
prayer and tears. Their gentle ways with the 
baby-children were a joy to watch. One group 
was working a model railway. In another a 
little twelve -year-old girl was nursing two 
tinies, and had a cluster of others at her feet 
while she read " Jack and the Beanstalk " from 
a luridly illustrated rag -book. Another little 
girl was figuring certain steps of a dance of 
her own invention, each step being gravely 



248 A CHARITABLE NIGHT 

followed by two youngsters who could scarcely 
walk. 

Then the wonderful woman— a local woman, 
she bought a small shop years ago, and now 
owns a blazing rank of Stores— who financed 
the play-room went to the piano, crashed a 
few chords, and instantly every head, golden 
or brown or dark, was lifted to us. My hostess 
said something — a word of invitation— and, as 
though it were a signal, the crowd leaped up, 
and rushed, tumbled, or toddled towards us. 

" What about a song? " cried the lady. 

" Ooo-er . . . rather ! " 

" What'll we have, then?" 

The shrill bable half -stunned me. No two 
called for the same thing. If my hearing were 
correct, they wanted every popular song of 
the last ten years. However, we compromised, 
for a start, on " Jungle-Town," and, though 
I felt extremely nervous of such an audience, 
I gave it them, and then invited them for the 
second chorus. 

What a chorus ! Even the babies, who knew 
nothing of the words and could not have spoken 
them if they had, seemed to know the tune, 
and they let it out in every possible key. That 
song went with a bang, and I had no rest for 
at least half an hour. We managed to get 
them to write their favourites on slips of paper, 
and I took them in rotation, the symphony 
being in every case interrupted by long-drawn 
groans from the disappointed ones, and shrieks 
of glee from those who had chosen it . " On 
the Mississippi " was the winner of the 



EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH 249 

evening ; it was encored five times ; and a 
hot second was "I do Kinder Feel I'm in 
Love." 

When their demands had been exhausted 
I had a rest, and some coffee, while Iris, a 
wicked little girl of eleven, told the story of 
Joan of Arc. Other girls followed her, each 
telling her own pet story. Their skill in this 
direction was a thing to marvel at. The 
audience was a joy, with half -raised heads, 
wide eyes, open mouths, every nerve of them 
hanging on the reciter's words. Indeed, I, too, 
found that one of the tale-tellers had " got " 
me with her story of Andersen's " Little Match 
Girl." 

On their asking another song, I told them 
the " creepy-creepy " story of Mark Twain's— 
the one about " Who's got my Golden Arm/' 
where, if you have worked it up properly, you 
get a shriek of horror on the last word. I got 
it. A shriek of horror? It nearly pierced the 
drums of the ear. Then they all huddled 
together in a big bunch, each embracing the 
other, and begged me to tell it again ; so, 
while they clung tightly together for safety, 
I told it again, but instead of a shriek I got a 
hysterical laugh which lasted for nearly 
a minute before they disentangled themselves. 
Then I gave them Charles Pond's recital about 
the dog -hospital, and the famous " Cohen at 
the Telephone." 

At half -past nine they were collected into 
bunches, and dispatched home under the 
guidance of the bigger girls. They paused 



250 A CHARITABLE NIGHT 

at the door to scream messages to me, to chant 
bits of the choruses we had sung, to dance with 
loud, defiant feet on the hollow floor, and one 
little girl gave me a pearl button from her 
pinafore as a keepsake, and hoped I would 
come again. Then she kissed me Good-Night, 
and ran off amid jeers from the boys. 

At ten o'clock I helped my hostess in the 
clearing away of the cakes and coffee-cups, 
and, half an hour later, we were out in the 
clamorous wilds of Shepherd's Bush. 



A FRENCH NIGHT 
OLD COMPTON STREET 



OLD COMPTON STREET 

Through London rain her people flow, 

And Pleasure trafficks to and fro. 
A gemmy splendour fills the town, 
And robes her in a spangled gown 

Through which no sorry wound may show. 

But with the dusk my fancies go 
To that grey street L used to know, 

Where Love once brought his heavy crown 
Through London rain. 

And ever, when the day is low, 
And stealthy clouds the night fore throw, 
I quest these ways of dear renown, 
And pray, while Hope in tears I drown, 
That once again her face may glow, 
Through Londo7i rain I 



A FRENCH NIGHT 

OLD COMPTON STREET 

Step aside from the jostle and clamour of 
Oxford Street into Soho Square, and you are 
back in the eighteenth century and as lonely 
as a good man in Chicago. Cross the Square, 
cut through Greek Street or Dean Street, and 
you are in— Paris, amid the clang, the gesture, 
and the alert nonchalance of metropolitan 
France. 

Soho— magic syllables ! For when the 
respectable Londoner wants to feel devilish 
he goes to Soho, where every street is a song. 
'He walks through Old Compton Street, and, 
instinctively, he swaggers ; he is abroad ; he 
is a dog. He comes up from Surbiton or 
Norwood or Golder's Green, and he dines 
cheaply at one of the hundred little restaurants, 
and returns home with the air and the sensa- 
tion of one who has travelled, and has peeped 
into places that are not . . . Quite . . . you 
know. 

Soho exists only to feed the drab suburban 
population of London on the spree. That 
artificial atmosphere of the Quartier Latin, 
those little touches of a false Bohemia are 



254 A FRENCH NIGHT 

all cunningly spread from the brains of the 
restaurateurs as a net to catch the young bank 
clerk and the young Fabian girl . Indeed, one 
establishment has overplayed the game to the 
extent of renaming itself " The Bohemia." The 
result is that one dare not go there for fear 
of dining amid the minor clergy and the 
Fabians and the girl -typists. It is a little 
pitiable to make a tour of the cafes and watch 
the Londoner trying to be Bohemian. There 
has been, of course, for the last few years, 
a growing disregard, among all classes, for 
the heavier conventionalities ; but this deter- 
mined Bohemianism is a mistake. The 
Englishman can no more be trifling and 
light-hearted in the Gallic manner than a Polar 
bear can dance the maxixe bresilienne in the 
jungle. If you have ever visited those melan- 
choly places, the night clubs and cabarets, you 
will appreciate the immense effort that devilry 
demands from him. Those places were the 
last word in dullness. I have been at Hamp- 
stead tea-parties which gave you a little more 
of the joy of living. I have watched the nuts 
and the girls, and what have I seen? Bore- 
dom. Heavy eyes, nodding heads, a worn-out 
face, saying with determination, " I WILL be 
gay ! " Perhaps you have seen the pictures of 
those luxuriously upholstered and appointed 
establishments : music, gaiety, sparkle, fine 
dresses, costume songs, tangos, smart conversa- 
tion and faces, and all the rest of it. But the 
real thing. . . . Imagine a lot of dishevelled 
girls pouring into a stuffy room after the 



. 



OLD COMPTON STREET 255 



theatre, looking already fatigued, but bracing 
themselves to dance and eat and drink and 
talk until— as I have seen them— they fall asleep 
over the tables, and hate the boy who brought 
them there. 

Practically the sole purpose of the place 
was to fill some one's pockets, for, as the 
patrons were playing at being frightful dogs, 
the management knew that they could do as 
they liked with the tariff. The boys wouldn't 
go to night-clubs if they were not spend- 
thrifts. Result : whisky -and-soda, seven -and- 
sixpence ; cup of coffee, half a crown. And 
nobody ever had the pluck to ask for change 
out of a sovereign. 

Now, I love my Cockneys, heart and soul. 
And, just because I love them so much, I do 
wish to goodness they wouldn't be Bohemian ; 
I do wish to goodness they would keep out 
of the Soho cafes. They only come in quest 
of a Bohemianism which isn't there. They 
can get much better food at home, or they 
can afford to get a really good meal at an 
English hotel. I wish they would leave Soho 
alone for the people like myself who feed there 
because it is cheap, and because the waiters 
will give us credit. 

" Gargong," cried the diner, whose food was 
underdone, " these sausages ne sont pas fait ! " 

If the Cockney goes on like this, he will 
spoil Soho, and he will lose his own delightful 
individuality and idiosyncrasy. 

But, apart from the invasion of Soho 
by the girl -clerk and the book-keeper, one 



256 A FRENCH NIGHT 

cannot but love it. I love it because, in my 
early days of scant feeding, it was the one 
spot in London where I could gorge to re- 
pletion for a shilling. There was a little place 
in Wardour Street, the Franco -Suisse — it is still 
there— whose shilling table d'hote was a marvel. 
And I always had my bob's worth, I can assure 
you ; for those were the days when one went 
hungry all day in order to buy concert tickets. 
Indeed, there were occasions when the bread- 
basket was removed from my table, so savage 
was the raid I made upon it. 

There, one night a week, we feasted 
gloriously. We revelled. We read the 
Gaulols and Gil Bias and papers of a 
friskier tone. There still exist a Servian 
cafe and a Hungarian cafe, where all manner 
of inflammatory organs of Nihilism may be 
read, and where heavy-bearded men— Anar- 
chists, you hope, but piano -builders, you fear 
—would sit for three hours over their dinner 
Talking, Talking, Talking. Then for another 
hour they would play backgammon, and at 
last roll out, blasphemously, to the darkened 
street, and so Home to those mysterious 
lodgings about Broad Street and Pulteney 
Street. 

How the kitchens manage to do those 
shilling table d'hotes is a mystery which I 
have never solved, though I have visited 
" below " on one or two occasions and talked 
with the chefs. There are about a dozen cafes 
now which, for the Homeric shilling, give you 
four courses, bread ad lib, and coffee to follow. 



OLD COMPTON STREET 257 

And it is good ; it is a refection for the gods 
— certain selected gods. 

You stroll into the little gaslit room 
(enamelled in white and decorated with 
tables set in the simplest fashion, yet clean 
and sufficient) as though you are dropping 
in at The Savoy or Dieudonne's. It is rhom- 
boidal in shape, with many angles, as though 
perspective had suddenly gone mad. Each 
table is set with a spoon, a knife, a fork, a 
serviette, a basket of French bread, and a 
jar of French mustard. If you are in spend- 
thrift mood, you may send the boy for a bottle 
of vin ordinaire, which costs tenpence ; on 
more sober occasions you send him for beer. 

There is no menu on the table ; the waiter 
or, more usually, in these smaller places, the 
waitress explains things to you as you go along. 
Each course carries two dishes, aa choix. 
There are no hors d'oeuvres ; you dash gaily 
into the soup. The tureen is brought to the 
table, and you have as many goes as you 
please. Hot water, flavoured with potato and 
garnished with a yard of bread, makes an 
excellent lining for a hollow stomach. This 
is followed by omelette or fish. Of the two 
evils you choose the less, and cry " Omelette ! " 
When the omelette is thrown in front of you 
it at once makes its presence felt. It recalls 
Bill Nye's beautiful story about an introspec- 
tive egg laid by a morbid hen. However, 
if you smother the omelette in salt, red 
pepper, and mustard, you will be able to 
deal with it. I fear I cannot say as much 

17 



258 A FRENCH NIGHT 

for the fish. Then follows the inevitable 
chicken and salad, or perhaps Vienna steak, 
or vol-au-vent. The next item is Camembert 
or fruit, and coffee concludes the display. 

Dining in these places is not a matter of 
subdued murmurs, of conversation in dulcet 
tones, or soft strains from the band. Rather 
you seem to dine in a menagerie. It is a 
bombardment more than a meal. The air 
buckles and cracks with noise. The first out- 
break of hostilities comes from the counter 
at the entry of the first guest. The moment 
he is seated the waitress screams, " Un potage 
— un ! " The large Monsieur, the proprietor, 
at the counter, bellows down the tube, " Un 
POTAGE — Un ! " Away in subterranean regions 
an ear catches it, and a distant voice chants 
" Potage ! " And then from the far reaches of 
the kitchen you hear a smothered tenor, as 
coming from the throat of one drowned in 
the soup-kettle, "Potage!" As the cus- 
tomers crowd in the din increases. Every- 
where there is noise ; as a result the customers 
must shout their conversation. As the volume 
of conversation increases the counter, finding 
itself hard-pressed, brings up its heavy 
artillery. 

" Vol-au-vent ! " sings the waitress. ' Vol- 
au-vent! " chants the counter in a bass as 
heavy and with as wide a range as Chalia- 
pine's. " Vol-au-vent ! " roars the kitchen 
with the despair of tears in the voice ; and 
"Vo 1-a u-v e n t ! " wails the lost scul beyond 
the Styx. By half -past seven it is no longer 



OLD COMPTON STREET 259 

a restaurant : it is no longer a dinner that is 
being served. It is a grand opera that is in 
progress. The vocalists, " finding " them- 
selves towards the end of the first act, warm 
up to the second, and each develops an in- 
dividuality. I have often let my Vienna steak 
get cold while listening and trying to dis- 
tinguish between the kitchen lift -man and the 
cook. Lift -man is usually a light and agree- 
able baritone, while the cook has mostly a 
falsetto, with a really exciting register. This 
grand opera idea affects, in turn, the 
waitresses. To the first -comers they are casual 
and chatty ; but towards seven o'clock there 
is a subtle change. They become tragic. They 
are as the children of destiny. There is that 
Italianate sob in the voice as they demand 
Poulet rotl aa salade ! as who should cry, 
" Ah, fors e lui ! " or " In questa tomba. . . ." 
They do not serve you. They assault you with 
soup or omelette. They make a grand pass 
above your head, and fling knife and fork 
before you. They collide with themselves and 
each other, and there are recriminations and 
reprisals. They quarrel, apparently, to the 
death, while M'sieu and Madame look on, 
passive spectators of the eternal drama. The 
air boils. The blood of the diners begins to 
boil, too, for they wave napkins and sticks 
of bread, and they bellow and scream defiance 
at one another. They draw the attention of 
the waitress to the fact that there is no salt 
on the table ; what they seem to be telling 
her is that the destinies of France are in the 



2<5o A FRENCH NIGHT 

balance, the enemy is at the gates, and that 
she must deliver herself as hostage or suffer 
dreadful deaths. Everything, in fact, boils, 
except the soup and the coffee ; and at 
last, glad to escape, you toss your shilling 
on the table and tumble out, followed by a 
yearning cry of " Une salade— une ! " 

Even then your entertainment has not ceased 
with the passing of the shilling. For there 
are now numerous coffee -bars in Old Compton 
Street where for a penny you may lounge 
at the counter and get an excellent cup of 
black coffee, and listen to the electric piano, 
splurging its cheap gaiety on the night, or 
to the newsmen yelling " Journaux de 
Paris ! " or " Derniere He lire ! " There are 
" The Chat Noir," ' The Cafe Leon," and 
" The Cafe Bar Conte " ; also there is " The 
Suisse," where you may get " rekerky " 
liqueurs at threepence a time, and there 
is a Japanese cafe in Edward Street. 

Of course there are numbers of places in 
Soho where you may dine more lavishly and 
expensively, and where you will find a band 
and a careful wine-list, such as Maxim's, The 
Coventry, The Florence, and Kettner's. Here 
you do not escape for a shilling, or any- 
thing like it. Maxim's does an excellent half- 
crown dinner, and so, too, does The Rendez- 
vous. The others range from three shillings 
to five shillings ; and as the price of the meal 
increases so do the prices on the wine-lists 
increase, though you drink the same wine in 
each establishment. 



OLD COMPTON STREET 261 

The atmosphere of the cheaper places is, 
however, distinctly more companionable than 
that of these others. In the latter you have 
Surbiton and Streatham, anxious to display its 
small stock of evening frocks and dress suits ; 
very proper, very conscious of itself, very 
proud of having broken away from parental 
tradition. But in the smaller places, which 
are supported by a regular clientele of the 
French clerks, workmen, and warehouse 
porters who are employed in and about 
Oxford Street, the sense of camaraderie and 
naturalness is very strong. These people are 
not doing anything extraordinary. They are 
just having dinner, and they are gay and 
insouciant about it, as they are about every- 
thing except frivolity. It is not exciting for 
them to dine on five courses instead of on 
roast mutton and vegetables and milk- 
pudding ; it is commonplace. For that is 
the curious thing about the foreigner : wherever 
he wanders he takes his country with him. 
Englishmen get into queer corners of the 
world, and adapt themselves to local customs, 
fit themselves into local landscapes. Not so 
the Continental. Let him go to London, New 
York, Chicago, San Francisco, and he will take 
France, or Germany, or Italy, or Russia with 
him. Here in this little square mile of London 
is France : French shops, French comestibles, 
French papers, French books, French pictures, 
French hardware, and French restaurants and 
manners. In Old Compton Street he is as 
much in France as if he were in the rue 



262 A FRENCH NIGHT 

Chaussee d'Antin. I met some time since a 
grey little Frenchman who is first fiddle at 
a hall near Piccadilly Circus. He has never 
been out of France. Years and years ago he 
came from Paris, and went to friends in 
Wardour Street. There he worked for some 
time in a French music warehouse ; and, when 
that failed, he was taken on in a small theatre 
near Shaftesbury Avenue. Thence, at fifty - 
two, he drifted into this music-hall orchestra, 
of which he is now leader. Yet during the 
whole time he has been with us he has never 
visited London. His London life has been 
limited to that square mile of short, brisk 
streets, Soho. If he crossed Piccadilly Circus, 
he would be lost, poor dear ! 

" Ah ! " he sighs. " France . . . yes . . . 
Paris. Yes." For he lives only in dreams 
of the real Paris. He hopes soon to return 
there. He hoped soon to return there thirty 
years ago. He hates his work. He does 
not want to play the music of London, but 
the music of Paris. If he must play in London, 
he would choose to play in Covent Garden 
orchestra, where his fancy would have full free- 
dom. When he says Music, he means Mas- 
senet, Gounod, Puccini, Mascagni, Leon- 
cavallo. He plays Wagner with but little 
interest. He plays Viennese opera with a posi- 
tive snort. Ragtime — well, I do not think 
he is conscious of playing it ; he fiddles 
mechanically for that. But when, by a rare 
chance, the bill contains an excerpt from 
Pagliacci, La Boheme, or Butterfly, then he 



OLD COMPTON STREET 263 

lives. He cares nothing for the twilight muse 
of your intellectual moderns— Debussy, Maurice 
Ravel, Scriabine, and such. For him music 
is melody, melody, melody— laughter, quick 
tears, and the graceful surface of things ; 
movement and festal colour. 

He seldom rises before noon— unless re- 
hearsals compel— and then, after a coffee, he 
wanders forth, smoking the cigarette of 
Algeria, and humming, always humming, the 
music that is being hummed in Paris. He 
is picturesque, in his own way— shabby, but 
artistically shabby. At one o'clock you will see 
him in ' The Dieppe," taking their shilling 
table d'hote dejeuner, with a half -bottle of vin 
ordinaire ; and he will sit over the coffee 
perhaps until three o'clock, murmuring the 
luscious, facile phrases of Massenet. 

His great friend is the Irishman who plays 
the drum, for they have this in common : they 
are both exiles. They are both " saving up " 
to return home. They have both been " saving 
up " for the last twenty years. In each case 
there is a girl. ... Or there was a girl 
twenty years ago. She is waiting for them 
— one in Paris, and the other in Wicklow. At 
least, so they believe. Sometimes, though, I 
think they must doubt ; for I have met them 
together in the Hotel Suisse putting absinthes 
away carelessly, hopelessly ; and a man does 
not play with absinthe when a girl is waiting 
for him. 



A SCANDINAVIAN NIGHT 
SHADWELL 



AT SHAD WELL 

He was a bad, glad sailor-man, 

Tan-ta-ta-ran-tan-tare-o / 
You never could find a haler man, 

Tan-ta-ta-ran-tan-tare ! 
All human wickedness he knew, 
From Millwall Docks to Pi-chi-lu ; 
He loved all things that make us gay, 
He'd spit his juice ten yards away, 

And roundly he'd declare — oh ! 
" // isn't so much that I want the beer 

As the bloody good company, 
Whow ! 

Bloody good company ! " 

He loved all creatures — black, brown, white, 

Tan-ta-ta-ran-tan-tare-o ! 
And never a word he'd speak in spite, 

Tan-ta-ta-ran-tan-tare / 
He knew that we were mortal men 
Who sinned and laughed and sinned again ; 
And never a cruel thing he'd do 
At Millwall Docks or Pi-chi-lu; 
If you were down he'd make you gay : 
He'd spit his juice ten yards away, 

And roundly he'd declare — oh J 
" // isn't so much that I want yer beer 

As yer bloody good company, 
Whow ! 

Bloody good company ! " 



A SCANDINAVIAN NIGHT 

SHAD WELL 

One night, when I was ten years old, I was 
taken by a boy who was old enough to have 
known better into the ashy darkness of Shad- 
well and St. George's. Along that perilous 
mile we slipped, with drumming hearts. Then 
a warm window greeted us . . . voices . . . 
gruff feet . . . bits of strange song . . . and 
then an open door and a sharp slab of mellow 
light. With a sense of high adventure we 
peeped in. Some one beckoned. We entered. 
The room was sawdusted as to the floor, littered 
with wooden tables and benches. All was 
sloppy with rings and pools of spent cocoa. 
The air was a conflict : the frivolous odour of 
fried sausage coyly flirted with the solemn 
smell of dead smoke, and between them they 
bore a bastard perfume of stale grease. Coffee- 
urns screamed and belched. Cakes made the 
counter gay. 

We stood for a moment, gazing, wondering. 
Then the blond-bearded giant who had 
beckoned repeated his invitation ; indeed, he 
reached a huge arm, seized me, and set me 

on his knee. I lost all sense of ownership 

367 



268 A SCANDINAVIAN NIGHT 

of my face in the tangles of his beard. He 
hiccuped. He coughed. He rattled. He 
sneezed. His forearms and fingers flew, as 
though repelling multitudinous attacks. His 
face curled, and crinkled, and slipped, and 
jumped suddenly straight again, and then 
vanished in infinite corrugations. He seemed 
to be in the agony of a lost soul which seeks 
to cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous 
stuff. . . . Arms and lips lashed the air about 
them, and at last the very lines of his body 
seemed expressive of the state of a man who 
has explained himself forty-five times, and is 
then politely asked to explain himself. For 
half an hour, I suppose, I sat on his knee while 
he sneezed and roared and played games with 
his vocal chords. 

It was not until next morning that I learnt 
that he had been speaking Norwegian and try- 
ing to ask me to have a cake. When I knew 
that I had been in the lair of the Scandinavian 
seamen, I thrilled. When I learnt that I had 
lost a cake, I felt sad. 

It is a curious quarter, this Shadwell and 
St. George's : a street of mission -halls for 
foreign sailors and of temperance restaurants, 
such as that described, mostly for the Scandi- 
navians, though there are many shops cater- 
ing for them still farther East. Sometimes 
you may hear a long, savage roar, but there 
is no cause for alarm. It is only that the 
great Mr. Jamrach, London's leading dealer 
in wild animals, has his menagerie in this 
street . 



SHADWELL 269 

The shop-fronts are lettered in Danish, 
Norwegian, and Swedish. Strange provisions 
are found in the " general " shops, and quaintly 
carved goods and long wooden pipes in other 
windows. Marine stores jostle one another, 
shoulder to shoulder, and there is a rich smell 
of tar, bilge -water, and the hold of a cargo 
tramp. Almost you expect to hear the rattle 
of the windlass, as you stand in the badly 
lighted 'establishment of Johann Dvensk, sur- 
rounded by ropes, old ship's iron, bloodthirsty 
blades, canvas, blocks, and pulleys. Some- 
thing in this narrow space seizes you, and you 
feel that you must " Luff her ! " or " Starrrrrb'd 
yer Helllllllm ! " or " Ease 'er ! " or " Man the 
tops'l ! " or whatever they do and say on 
Scandinavian boats. You may see these boats 
in the Pool any night ; timber boats they are, 
for the most part ; squat, low -lying affairs, 
but curiously picturesque when massed close 
with other snipping, steam or sail. One of our 
London songsters has recorded that " there's 
always something doing by the seaside " ; and 
that is equally true of down Thameside. 
London River is always alive with beauty, 
splendid with stress and the sweat of human 
hands. There is something infinitely sadden- 
ing in watching the casual, business-like de- 
parture of one of these big boats. As she 
swings away and drops downstream, her crew, 
idling, lean over the side, and spit, smoking 
their long Swedish pipes, and looking curiously 
unearthly as the dock lights fall now on one 
now on the other. I always want to plunge 



270 A SCANDINAVIAN NIGHT 

into the water and follow them through that 
infinitude of travel which is suggested by the 
dim outline of Greenwich. . . . 

The lamps in Shadwell High Street and 
what was once RatclifT Highway are few and 
very pale ; and each one, welcome as it is, 
flings shapes of fear across your path as you 
leave its radius and step into darkness more 
utter. The quality of the darkness is nasty. 
That is the only word for it. It is indefinite, 
leering. It says nothing to you. It is reticent 
with the reticence of Evil. It is not black and 
frightful, like the darkness of Hoxton or Spital- 
fields. It is not pleasant, like the darkness 
of Chinatown. It is not matey, like the dark- 
ness of Hackney Marshes. It is . . . nasty. 
At every ten paces there is the black mouth of 
an alley with just space enough for the passage 
of one person. Within the jaws of each alley 
is a lounging figure — man, woman, or child, 
Londoner or foreigner, you cannot discern. 
But it is there, silent, watchful, expectant. And 
if you choose to venture, you may examine 
more closely. You may note that the faces 
that peer at you are faces such as one only sees 
elsewhere in the pictures of Felicien Rops. 
Sometimes it is a curl-sweet little girl who 
greets you with a smile strangely cold. Some- 
times the mouth of the alley will appear to 
open and will spit at you, apparently by 
chance. If it hits you, the alley swears at 
you : a deep, frightfully foreign oath. Sudden 
doors flap, and little gusts of jollity sweep 
up the street. 



SHADWELL 271 

In the old days, Shadwell embraced the 
Oriental quarter, and times, in the 'seventies, 
long before I was thought of, seem to have 
been really frolicsome — or so I gather from 
James Greenwood. The chief inhabitants of 
to-day are those little girls just mentioned. 
Walk here at any time of the day or night, 
and you will find in every doorway and at those 
corners which are illuminated, clusters of little 
girls, all of the same age, all of the same 
height, their glances knowing so much more 
than their little fresh lips imply. They seem 
all to be born at that age, and they never grow 
up. For every boy and woman that you pass 
in that dusty mile you will find dozens of pale 
little girls. There is a reason for this local 
product, about which I have written more 
seriously elsewhere, and if you saunter here, 
beware of sympathy with crying children. To 
give a penny to one of these little girls is to 
buy trouble, and lots of it. I could tell things 
. . . curious things. . . . But if I did you 
would not believe them ; and if you believed 
them you would be sick. I could tell of a man 
who regularly hired, for pots of beer, his little 
daughters to the bestialities of the seamen. 
I could tell you . . . but this is not a socio- 
logical pamphlet. . . . 

I have mentioned the peculiar darkness. It 
is provocative and insistent. It possesses you. 
For you know that in this street, or rather, back 
of it, there are the homes of the worst vices of 
the sea-going foreigner. It is the haunt of 
the dissolute and the indigent ; not only of the 



272 A SCANDINAVIAN NIGHT 

normal brute, but also of the erotomaniac, the 
satyr, and the sadist. You know that behind 
those heights of houses, stretching over the 
street with dumb, blank faces, there are 
strangely lighted rooms, where the old noc- 
turnal rites are going forward, and the mourn- 
ful windows call you ; damn it, they call you 
so that you have to run away from yourself. 
For — and this seems hardly to have been dis- 
covered as yet — it is always the ugly and the 
repellent that allure. I can never understand 
why artists and moralists paint Temptation in- 
variably in gaudy scarlet and jewels, tinted 
cheeks, and laughing hair. If she were always 
like that, morality would be gloriously trium- 
phant ; for she would attract nobody. The 
true Temptation of this world and flesh wears 
grey rags, dishevelled hair, and an ashen 
cheek. Any expert will prove that. I can 
never believe that any one would be lured to 
destruction by those birds of paradise whom 
one has met in the stuffy, over-gilded, and, 
happily, abortive night-clubs and cabarets. If a 
consensus were taken, I think it would be found 
that wickedness gaily apparelled is seldom 
successful. It is the subtle and the sinister, 
the dark and half-known, that make the big 
appeal. Lace and scent and champagne and 
the shaded glamour of Western establishments 
leave most men cold, I know. But dirt and 
gloom and secrecy. . . . We needs must love 
the lowest when we see it. 

Even as a child I was conscious of the call 
of these wicked nightscapes. As far back as 



SHADWELL 273 

I can remember the Eastern parishes have 
been, to me, the home of Romance. My 
romance was not in the things of glitter and 
chocolate-box gaiety, but rather in the dolours 
and silences of the East. Long before I had 
adventured there, its very street-names — White- 
chapel High Street, Ratcliff Highway, Folly 
Wall, Stepney Causeway, Pennyfields — had 
thrilled me as I believe other children thrill to 
the names of The Arabian Nights. 

That is why I come sometimes to Shad'well, 
and sit in its tiny beer-shops, and listen to the 
roaring of Jamrach's lions, and talk with the 
blond fellows whose conversation is mostly 
limited to the universalities of intercourse. I 
was there on one occasion, in one of the houses 
which are, in the majority of cases, only 
licensed for beer, and I made the acquaintance 
of a quite excellent fellow, and spent the whole 
evening with him. He talked Swedish,, I 
talked , English ; and we understood one 
another perfectly. We did a " pub -crawl " in 
Commercial Road and East India Dock Road, 
and finished up at the Queen's Theatre in 
Poplar High Street. A jolly evening ended, 
much too early for me, at one o'clock in the 
morning, when he insisted on entering a 
lodging-house in Gill Street because he was 
sure that it was his. I tried to make him 
understand, by diagrams on the pavement, that 
he was some half-mile from St. George's. But 
no ; he loomed above me, in his blond strength, 
and when he tried to follow the diagram, he 
toppled over. I spent five minutes in lift- 



274 A SCANDINAVIAN NIGHT 

ing six foot three and about twelve stone of 
Swedish manhood to its feet. 

He looked solemn, and insisted : " I ban 
gude Swede." 

I told him again that he must not enter the 
lodging-house, but must let me see him safe 
to his right quarters. But he thrust me aside : 
" I ban gude Swede ! " he said, resentfully this 
time, with hauteur. I pulled his coat-tails, 
and tried to lead him back to Shadwell ; but 
it was useless. 

" I ban gude Swede ! " 
There I left him, trying to climb the six 
steps leading to the lodging-house entrance. 
I looked back at the corner. He turned, to 
wave his hand in valediction, and, floating 
across the night, came a proud declaration — 
" I ban gude Swede ! " 

This is one of the few occasions when I have 
been gay in Shadwell. Mostly, you cannot be 
gay ; the place simply won't let you be gay. 
You cannot laugh there spontaneously. You 
may hear bursts of filthy laughter from this or 
that low-lit window ; but it is not spontaneous . 
You only laugh like that when you have nine 
or ten inside you. The spirit of the place 
does not, in the ordinary way, move you to 
cheer. Its mist, and its dust-heaps, and its 
coal -wharves, and the reek of the river sink 
into you, and disturb your peace of mind. 

Most holy night descends never upon Shad- 
well. The night life of any dockside is as 
vociferant as the day. They slumber not, nor 
sleep in this region. They bathe not, neither 



SHADWELL 27$ 

do they swim ; and Cerberus in all his hideous - 
ness was not arrayed like some of these. If 
you want to make your child good by terror, 
show him a picture of a Swede or a Malay, 
pickled in brown sweat after a stoking-up job. 

Of course, the seamen of St. George's do 
not view it from this angle. Shadwell is only 
fearful and gloomy to those who have fearful 
and gloomy minds. Seamen haven't. They 
have only fearful and gloomy habits. 
Probably, when the evening has lit the world 
to slow beauty, and a quart or so has stung 
your skin to a galloping sense of life, Shadwell 
High Street and its grey girls are a garden of 
pure pleasure. I shouldn't wonder. 

There are those among them who love Shad- 
well. A hefty seafaring Dane whom I once 
met told me he loved the times when his boat 
brought him to London — by which, of course, 
he meant Shadwell. He liked the life and the 
people and the beer. And, indeed, for those 
who do love any part of London, it is all- 
sufficient. I suppose there are a few people 
living here who long to escape from it when 
the calendar calls Spring ; to kiss their faces 
to the grass ; to lose their tired souls in tangles 
of green shade. But they are hardly to be 
met with. Those rather futile fields and songs 
of birds and bud-spangled trees are all very 
well, if you have the narrow mind of the Nature- 
lover ; but how much sweeter are the things 
of the hands, the darling friendliness of the 
streets ! The maidenly month of April makes 
little difference to us here. We know, by the 



276 A SCANDINAVIAN NIGHT 

calendar and by our physical selves, that it is 
the season of song and quickening blood. 
Beyond London, amid the spray of orchard 
foam, bird and bee may make their carnival ; 
lusty spring may rustle in the hedgerows ; 
golden-tasselled summer may move along the 
shadow-fretted meadows ; but what does it say 
to us? Nothing. . . . Here we still gamble, 
and worship the robustious things that come 
our way, and wait to find a boat. We have 
no seasons. We have no means of marking 
the delicate pomp of the year's procession. We 
have not even the divisions of day and night, 
for, as I have said, boats must sail at all hours 
of the day and night, and their swarthy crews 
are ever about. In Shadwell we have only 
more seamen or less seamen. Summer is a 
spell of stickiness, and Winter a time of fog. 
Season of flower and awakening be blowed ! 
I'll have the same again ! 

I have said, a few paragraphs back, that this 
is not a sociological pamphlet ; but I do seri- 
ously feel that if I am writing on the subject 
at all, I may as well write the complete truth. 
I have heard, often, in this macabre street, the 
most piercing of all sounds that the London 
night can hold : a child's scream. The sound 
of a voice in pain or terror is horrible enough 
anywhere at night ; it is twenty times worse 
in this district, when the voice is a child's. 
I want, very badly, to tell the story I refrained 
from telling. I want to tell it because it is 
true, because it ought to be told, and because 
it might shake you into some kind of action, 



SHADWELL 277 

which newspaper reports would never do. Yet 
I know perfectly well that if I did tell it, this 
book would be condemned as unclean, and 
I as a pornographist, if not something worse. 
So let our fatuous charity -mongers continue 
to supply Flannel Underclothing for the 
Daughters of Christian Stevedores ; let them 
continue to provide Good Wholesome Meals 
for the Wives of God-Fearing Draymen, and 
let them connive by silence at those other un- 
speakable things. 

The University men and the excellent virgins 
who carry out this kind of patronage might 
do well to drop it for a while, and tell the 
plain truth about the things which they must 
see in the course of their labours. If you 
stand in Leicester Square, in the gayest quarter 
of the gayest city in the world, after nightfall, 
indeed, long after theatres, bars, and music- 
halls are closed, and their saucy lights extin- 
guished, you will see, on the south side, a 
single lamp glowing through the green of the 
branches. That lamp is shining the whole 
night through. The door that it lights is never 
closed, day or night; it dare not close. 
Through the leafy gloom of the Square it 
shines — a watchful eye regarding the foulest 
blot on the civilization of England. It is the 
lamp of the office of the National Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. This 
Society keeps five hundred workers incessantly 
busy, day and night, preventing cruelty to little 
English children. Go in, and listen to some of 
the stories that the inspectors can tell you. 



278 A SCANDINAVIAN NIGHT 

They can tell you of appalling sufferings in- 
flicted on children, of bruised bodies and 
lacerated limbs and poisoned minds, not only 
in the submerged quarters but in comfort- 
able houses by English people of education 
and position. Buy a few numbers of the 
Society's official organ, The Child's Guardian, 
and read of the hundreds of cases which they 
attack every month, and of the bestialities to 
which children are submitted, and you will then 
see that light as the beacon-light of England's 
disgrace. I once showed it to a Spanish friend, 
and he looked at me with polite disgust. " And 
your countrymen, my friend," he said, " speak 
of the Spaniards as cruel. Your countrymen, 
who gather themselves in dozens, protected by 
horses and dogs, to hunt a timid fox, call us 
cruel because we fight the bull — because our 
toreadors risk their lives every moment that 
they are in the ring, fighting a savage, 
maddened animal five times larger and stronger 
than themselves. You call us cruel — you, who 
have to found a Society in order to stop cruelty 
to your little children ! My friend, there is 
no Society like that in Spain, for no society 
like that is necessary. The most depraved 
Spaniard, town or countryman, would never 
dream of raising his hand against a child. And 
your countrymen, in face of that building, 
which is open day and night, and supports a 
staff of five hundred, call the Spaniards cruel ! 
My friend, yours surely must be the cruellest 
people on earth." 

And I had no answer for him, because I 



SHADWELL 279 

knew. ... I knew the sickening truth that 
every oil -shop in London sells thin canes at 
a halfpenny each, specially prepared and 
curved, for the whipping of children. I 
knew what Mr. Robert Parr had told me : and 
I knew why little girls of twelve and thirteen 
are about the dripping mouths of the Shad- 
well alleys at all queer hours. You will under- 
stand why some men, fathers of little girls, 
suddenly have money for beer when a foreign 
boat is berthed. You will appreciate what it 
is that twists its atmosphere into something 
anomalous. You remember the gracious or 
jolly fellows you have met, the sweet, rich sea- 
chanties you have heard ; and then you remem- 
ber . . . other things . . . and — oh, the 
people suddenly seem monstrous, the spirit of 
the place bites deep, and the dreadful laughter 
of it shocks. 



AN ITALIAN NIGHT 
CLERKENWELL 



CLERKENWELL 

Deep in the town a window smiles — 

You shall not find it, though you seek j 
But over many bricky miles 

It draws me through the wearing week. 
Its panes are dun, its curtains grey, 

It shows no heartsome shine at dusk ; 
For gas is dear, and factory pay 
Makes small display : 
On the small wage she earns she dare not be too gay ! 

A loud saloon flings golden light 

Athwart the wet and greasy way, 
Where, every happy Sunday night, 

We meet in mood of holiday. 
She wears a dress of claret glow 

That's thinly frothed with bead and lace. 
She buys this lace in Jasmine Row, 
A spot, you know, 
Where luxuries of lace for a mere nothing go. 

I love the shops that flare and lurk 

In the big street whose lainps are gents, 
For there she slops when off to work 

To covet silks and diadems. 
At evenings, too, the organ plays 

"My Hero" or "In Dixie Land" ; 
A nd in the odour ed purple haze, 
Where naphthas blaze, 
The grubby little girls the dust of dancing raise. 



AN ITALIAN NIGHT 

CLERKENWELL 

For some obscure reason Saffron Hill is always 
associated in the public mind with Little Italy. 
Why, I do not know. It isn't and never was 
Italian. There is not a trace of anything the 
least Italian about it. There isn't a shop or a 
home in the whole length of it. It is just 
a segment of the City, E.C. — a straggling street 
of flat -faced warehouses and printing-works ; 
high, impassive walls ; gaunt, sombre, and 
dumb ; not one sound or spark of life to be 
heard or seen anywhere. Yet that is what the 
unknowing think of when they think of the 
Italian quarter. 

The true, warm heart of Italy in London is 
Eyre Street Hill, which slips shyly out of one 
of the romantic streets of London — Clerkenwell 
Road. There is something very taking about 
Clerkenwell Road, something snug and cheer- 
ing. It is full, clustering, and alive. Here is 
the Italian Church. Here is St. John's Gate, 
where Goldsmith and Isaac Walton and a host 
of other delightful fellows lived. This gate- 
house is now all that remains of the Priory of 

St. John of Jerusalem around which the little 

283 



284 AN ITALIAN NIGHT 

village of Clerkenwell developed. Very near, 
too, are Cloth Fair, Bartholomew's Close, 
Smithfleld, and a hundred other echoes of past 
times. And here — most exciting of all— the 
redoubtable Mr. Heinz (famous for his 57 
Varieties) has his warehouse. 

There is a waywardness about Clerkenwell 
Road. It never seems quite to know where 
it shall go. It drifts, winds, rises, drops, 
debouches. You climb its length, and, at the 
top, you see a wide open space, which is 
Mount Pleasant, and you think you have 
reached its end ; but you haven't. There is 
much more to come. It doesn't stop until it 
reaches Gray's Inn Road, and then it stops 
sharply, unexpectedly. But the romance of the 
place lies not only in its past ; there is an 
immediate romance, for which you must turn 
into its byways. Here live all those bronzed 
street-merchants who carry delightful things to 
our doors — ice-cream, roast chestnuts, roast 
potatoes, chopped wood, and salt. In un- 
suspected warehouses here you may purchase 
wonderful toys that you never saw in any other 
shops. You may buy a barrow and a stove 
and a complete apparatus for roasting potatoes 
and chestnuts, including a natty little poker 
for raking out the cinders. You may buy a 
gaudily decorated barrow and freezing-plant 
for the manufacture and sale of ice-cream. Or 
— and as soon as I have the money this is 
what I am going to buy in Clerkenwell — you 
may buy a real street organ — a hundred of 
them, if you wish. While the main road and 



CLERKENWELL 285 

the side streets on the south are given up to 
the watch and clock -makers, the opposite side- 
streets are Italian soil. Here are large ware- 
houses where the poor Italian may hire an 
organ for the day, or week, or month. A 
rehearsal at one of these show-rooms is a 
deafening affair ; it is just like Naples on a 
Sunday morning. As the organs come over 
from Italy, they are " tried out," and any flaws 
are immediately detected by the expert ear. 
In the same way, a prospective hirer always 
tries his instrument before concluding the deal, 
running through the tunes to be sure that they 
are fairly up-to-date. When you get, say, six 
clients all rehearsing their organs at once in 
a small show-room . . . 

This organ industry, by the way, is a very 
big thing ; and the dealers make much more 
by hire than by sale. Sometimes a padrone, 
who has done very well, will buy an organ ; 
later, he may buy another organ, and perhaps 
another. Then, with three organs, he sits 
down, and sends other men out with them. 
Street organs, under our fatherly County 
Council, are forbidden on Sundays ; neverthe- 
less, Sunday being the only day when millions 
of people have any chance of recreation, many 
organs go out. Whither do they go? East, 
my dears. There, in any ramshackle hall, or 
fit -up archway, or disused stables, the boys and 
girls, out for fun, may dance the golden hours 
away throughout Sunday afternoon and even- 
ing. Often the organs are hired for Eastern 
weddings and christenings and other cere- 



286 AN ITALIAN NIGHT 

monials, and, by setting the musician to work, 
say, in the back parlour, the boys and girls 
can fling their little feet about the garden with- 
out interference from any one of the hundred 
authorities who have us at their mercy. 

It is because of the organs, I think, that I 
chiefly love Clerkenwell. Organs have been 
part of my life ever since I was old enough 
to sit up and take notice. Try to think of 
London without organs. Have they not added 
incalculably to the store of human happiness, 
and helped many thousands over the waste 
patches of the week ? They have ; and I heap 
smouldering curses upon the bland imbeciles of 
Bayswater who, some time ago, formed them- 
selves into a society for, I think they called it, 
The Abatement of Street Noises, and stuck 
their loathly notices in squares and public 
streets forbidding street organs to practise 
there. Let house-agents take note that I, for 
one, with at least a dozen of my friends, will 
never, never, never take a house in any area 
where organs or street vendors or street cries 
are prohibited. They are part of the very 
soul of London. Kill them, and you kill some- 
thing lovely and desirable, without which the 
world will be the sadder. That any one 
should have the impudence to ask for money 
for the carrying out of such a project is merely 
another proof of the disease of the age. They 
might as well form a society and appeal for 
funds for suppressing children from laughing 
or playing in the streets. They might as well 
form a society for the strangulation of all 



CLERKENWELL 287 

babies. They might as well . . . But if I 
go on like this, I shall get angry. Thank 
Heaven, organs are not yet suppressed, though, 
after the curtailing of licensed hours, any- 
thing is possible. In that event, it really looks 
as if America were the only country in which 
to live* unless one could find some soft island 
in the Pacific, where one could do just as one 
jolly well pleased. 

Let's all go down Eyre Street Hill, where 
organs are still gurgling, and where there is 
lazy laughter, and spaghetti and dolce far 
niente. There are little restaurants here hardly 
bigger than a couple of telephone boxes. They 
contain but two tables, and some wooden 
benches, but about a dozen gloriously savage 
boys from Palermo and Naples are noisily 
supping after their day's tramp round London 
with whatever industry they affect. They have 
olive skins, black curly hair, flashing eyes, and 
fingers that dance with gemmy rings. A new- 
comer arrives, unhooking from his shoulders 
the wooden tray which holds the group of 
statuettes that he has been hawking round 
Streatham and Norwood. He salutes them in 
mellifluous tones, and sits down. He orders 
nothing ; but a heaped -up dish of macaroni is 
put before him, and he attacks it with fork and 
finger. There are few women to be seen, but 
those few are gaudily arrayed in coloured hand- 
kerchiefs, their mournful eyes and purring 
voices torching the stern night to beauty. Of 
children there are dozens : furious boys and 
chattering girls. All the little girls, from four 



288 AN ITALIAN NIGHT 

to fourteen, wear socks, and the narrow road- 
way flashes with the whirling of little white 
legs, so that the pedestrian must dodge his 
way along as one dancing a schottische. A 
few public-houses shed their dusty radiance, 
but these, too, are little better than dolls' 
houses. I have never seen village beer-shops 
so small. They are really about the size of the 
front room of a labourer's cottage, divided into 
two — Public Bar and Private Bar. 

Such is the High Street of Italy, where one 
feeds. Most of the Italians, however, live in 
one of those huge blocks of tenements of which 
there are, I should think, a dozen in Clerken- 
well. They seem to centre about the sounding 
viaducts that leap over Rosebery Avenue. 
Upon a time the place had a reputation for 
lawlessness, but that is now gone, with most 
of the colour of things. Occasionally there is 
an affray with knives, but it is always among 
themselves : a sort of vendetta ; and nobody 
interferes so long as they refrain from blood- 
shed or from annoying peaceable people. The 
services in the Italian Church are very pic- 
turesque, and so, too, are their ceremonies at 
Christmas-time ; while the procession of the 
children at First Communion is a thing of 
beauty. The little girls and boys walk to- 
gether, the boys in black, the girls in white, 
with white wreaths gleaming in their dark curls. 
At Christmas -time there are great feasts, and 
every Italian baker and restaurant-keeper 
stocks his trays with Panetonnes, a kind of 
small loaf or bun, covered with sugar, which 



CLERKENWELL 289 

are distributed among the little ones of the 
Church. 

An old friend of mine, named Luigi, who 
once kept a tiny wine-shop, lives in a little 
dirty room in Rosoman Street, and I sometimes 
spend an evening with him. But not in 
summer. I adjure you — do not visit an im- 
poverished Italian who lives in one room in 
Clerkenwell, in the summer ; unless, of course, 
you are a sanitary inspector. He is an enter- 
taining old fellow, and speaks a delicious 
Italian-Cocknese, which no amount of trickery 
could render on the printed page. When I go, 
I usually take him a flask of Chianti and some 
Italian cigars, for which he very nearly 
kisses me. 

But Luigi has a story. You will see that at 
once if you scan his face. There is something 
behind him — something he would like to 
forget. It happened about ten years ago, and 
I witnessed it. Ten years ago, Luigi did some- 
thing — an act at once heroic, tragic, and 
idiotic. This was the way of it. 

It was an April night, and we were lounging 
at that corner which was once called Poverty 
Point ; the corner where Leather Lane crashes 
into Clerkenwell Road, and where, of a summer 
night, gather the splendid sons of Italy to 
discuss, to grin, to fight, and to invent new 
oaths. On this corner, moreover, they pivot in 
times of danger, and, once they can make the 
mazy circle of which it is the edge, safety 
from the pursuer is theirs. The place was 
alight with evening gladness. In the half- 

19 



2QO AN ITALIAN NIGHT 

darkness, indolent groups lounged or strolled, 
filling their lungs with the heavily garlicked air 
of the place. 

Then an organ pulled up at the public- 
house which smiles goldenly upon Mount 
Pleasant, and music broke upon us. Instantly, 
with the precision of a harlequinade, a stream 
of giggling girls poured from Eyre Street Hill 
and Back Hill. With the commencement of 
a rag-tag dance, the Point was whipped to 
frivolous life. The loungers grunted, and 
moved up to see. Clusters of children, little 
angels with dark eyes and language sufficiently 
seasoned to melt a glacier, slipped up from 
nowhere, and, one by one, the girls among 
them slid into the dance. One of them had 
a beribboned tambourine. Two others wanted 
it, and would snatch it away. Its owner said 
they were — something they could not possibly 
have been. 

Stabs of light from the tenements pierced 
the dusk high and low. The night shone with 
recent rain, and in a shifting haze of grey and 
rose the dancers sank and glided, until the 
public-house lamp was turned on and a cornet 
joined the organ. In the warm yellow light, 
the revels broke bounds, and, to the hysterical 
appeal of " Hiawatha," the Point became a 
Babel. . . . When most of the dancers had 
danced themselves to exhaustion, two of the 
smaller maidens stood out and essayed a kind 
of can -can. 

The crowd swooped in. It crowed with 
appreciation as they introduced all the piquant 



CLERKENWELL 291 

possibilities of the dance. It babbled its merri- 
ment at seeing little faces, which should show 
only the revel of April, bearing all the ravage 
of Autumn. 

Comments and exhortations, spiced to taste, 
flew about the Point, ricochetted, and returned 
in boomerang fashion to their authors, who 
repolished them and shot them forth again. 
Heads bobbed back, forth, and up in the effort 
to see. In a prestissimo fire of joy, the novel 
exercise reached its finale, when . . . 

" Hi-hi ! He. Eeeee ! " As though by 
signal, the whole Point was suddenly aspurt 
with spears of flame, leaping, meeting, and 
crossing. We looked round. The dance 
stopped, the organ gurgled away to rubbish, 
the crowd took open order, and stared at the 
narrow alley of Back Hill. Blankets of smoke 
moved from its mouth, pushing their suffoca- 
ting way up the street. Twenty people hurt 
themselves in shrieking orders. Women 
screamed and ran. From an open window a 
tongue of flame was thrust derisively ; it tickled 
a man's neck, and he swore. Then a lone 
woman had the sense to scream something 
intelligible. 

We all ran. English, Italian, and profane 
clashed together. Three small boys strangled 
each other in a race for the fire-bell. In Back 
Hill, men, women, and children were hustling 
themselves through the ground-floor window 
of the doomed house. Thick, languid flames 
blocked the doorway, swaying idly, ready to 
fasten their fangs in anything that approached. 



292 AN ITALIAN NIGHT 

Furniture crashed and bounded to the pave- 
ment. Mattresses were flung out to receive 
the indecent figures of their owners. The 
crowd swelled feverishly. Women screamed. 

Gradually the crackle of burning wood and 
the ripple of falling glass gained voice above 
the outcry of the crowd. A shout of fear and 
admiration surged up, as a spout of flame 
darted through the roof, and quivered proudly 
to the sky. Luigi threw back his sweeping 
felt hat, loosened his yellow neck-cloth, 
tightened his scarlet waistband. " It is bad," 
he said. " It is a fire." 

I said, " Yes," having nothing else to say. 
A few Cockneys inquired resentfully why some- 
body didn't do something. Then the word 
went round that all were out but one. A woman 
was left at the top . A sick hush fell . Away in 
the upper regions a voice was wailing. The 
women turned pale, and one or two edged 
away. The men whistled silently, and looked 
serious. They had the air of waiting for some- 
thing. It came. Luigi moved swiftly away 
from me, fought a way through the crowd, 
and stood by the door, his melodious head 
lashed by the fringe of the flames. 

" I go up," he said operatically. 

A dozen men dashed from him, crying 
things. " Wet blanket, there. Quick ! Here's 
a bloke going up. Italiano's going up ! " 

At the back of the crowd, where I stood, 
a few fools cheered. They were English. 
" 'Ray ! 'Ray ! 'Ray ! Good iron ! 'E's 
gotter nerve, 'e as. Wouldn't athought it o' 
them Italians." 



CLERKENWELL 293 

The Italians were silent. From the house 
came long screams, terrible to hear in the 
London twilight. A Sicilian said something 
in his own language which cannot be set down ; 
the proprietor of the Ristorante del Commercio 
also grew profane. The children stared and 
giggled, wonderingly. Blankets and buckets 
of water were conjured from some obscure 
place of succour. In half a minute the 
blankets were soaked, and Luigi was ready. 

A wispy man in a dented bowler danced with 
excitement. " Oh, he's gotter nerve, if yeh 
like. Going to risk his life, he is. Going to 
risk his blasted life." Fresh and keener 
screams went down the golden stairway. Luigi 
flung the wet folds about him, vaulted the low 
sill, and then the wild light danced evilly 
about him. Outside, we watched and waited. 
A lurid silence settled, and the far cries of one 
of the late dancers who was receiving correc- 
tion for dancing indecent dances seemed 
entirely to fill space. The atmosphere was, 
as it were, about to crack and buckle, and I 
was feeling that Luigi was a heroic fool, when 
a passing navvy, not susceptible to influences, 
saved the situation by bursting into song : — 

" Won't yew come ome, Bill Bailey, 
Won't yew come ome ? " 

The wispy man looked round, reprovingly. 
" Easy on, there ! " he implored. 
" WhafTor?" 
"Well . . . chep's risking his life." 



294 AN ITALIAN NIGHT 

"Well ... 'at don't make no difference. 
Be 'appy while yeh can, I say." 

" No, but . . . chep's risking his life." 

" I'll do ther washing, honey, 
I'll pay ther rent." 

" Risking his life, and all." 

Then the climax was reached. A scream 
sounded from above, then silence, then a con- 
fused rush of feet. The figure of Luigi filled 
the opening of the low window, and those 
nearest surged in to help and see. He was 
dragged through, head first, and set on his 
feet. The fire-engine raved and jangled in 
Clerkenwell Road, but there was no way for 
it. The firemen tried to clear the crowd, but 
it would not be denied its sight of the hero. 
It struggled in to admire. It roared and yelled 
in one and a hundred voices. The cafe pro- 
prietor gestured magnificently. Regard the 
hero ! How he was brave ! The wispy man 
nearly had a fit. He skipped. Risked his 
life, and all. For a blasted stranger. 

Luigi dropped the bundle gently from his 
arms, and stood over it, a little bewildered at 
his reception. The firemen fought furiously, 
and at last they cleared a passage for their 
plant. Then, as they cleared, the wispy man 
danced again, and seemed likely to die. He 
sprang forward and capered before Luigi. I 
tried to get through to help Luigi out, but I 
was wedged like a fishbone in the throat of 
the gang. 



CLERKENWELL 295 

It was then that horrid screams came again 
from the house, winding off in ragged ends. 
The wispy man spluttered. 

" Yeh damn fool ! Look what yeh brought 
down. Look at it. Yeh damn fool ! " 

Luigi looked still bewildered, and now I 
fought with sharp elbows, and managed to get 
to the front rank. The man's shaking finger 
pointed at Luigi's feet. " D'you know what 
you done, Italiano ? You made a mistake . A 
blasted mistake. Aw . . . yeh damn fool ! " 

I looked too. There was no woman at 
Luigi's feet. There was a bundle of sheets, 
blanket, and carpet. A scream came from 
the house. Every window filled with flame. 
The roof fell inwards with a crash and a rain 
of sparks. 

Clerkenwell has never forgiven Luigi. Luigi 
has never forgiven himself. 



A BASHER'S NIGHT 
HOXTON 



LONDON JUNE 

Rank odours ride on every breeze; 

Skyward a hundred towers loom; 
And factories throb and workshops wheeze, 

And children pine in secret gloom. 
To squabbling birds the roofs declaim 

Their little tale of misery ; 
And, smiling over murk and shame, 

A wild rose blows by Bermondsey. 

Where every traffic-thridden street 

Is ribboned o'er with shade and shine, 
And webbed with wire and choked with heat ; 

Where smokes with fouler smokes entwine ; 
And where, at evening, darkling lanes 

Fume with a sickly ribaldry — 
Above the squalors and the pains, 

A wild rose blows by Bermondsey 

Somewhere beneath a nest of tiles 

My little garret window squats, 
Staring across the cruel miles, 

And wondering of kindlier spots. 
An organ, just across the way, 

Sobs out its ragtime melody ; 
But in my heart it seems to play : 

A Wild Rose blows by Bermondsey ! 

And dreams of happy morning hills 

And woodlands laced with greenest boughs, 
Ate mine to-day amid the ills 

Of Tooley Street and wharf side sloughs, 
Though Cherry Gardens reek and roar, 

And engines gasp their horrid glee ; 
I mark their ugliness no tnore : 

A wild rose blows by Bermondsey. 



A BASHER'S NIGHT 

HOXTON 

Hoxton is not merely virile ; it is virulent . 
Life here hammers in the blood with something 
of the insistence of ragtime. The people- 
men, women, and children— are alive, spitefully 
alive. You feel that they are ready to do you 
damage, with or without reason. Here are 
antagonism and desire, stripped for battle. 
Little children, of three years old, have the 
spirit in them ; for they lean from tenement 
landings that jut over the street, and., with 
becoming seriousness, spit upon the passing 
pedestrians, every hit scoring two to the 
marksmen . 

The colour of Hoxton Street is a tremendous 
purple. It springs upon you, as you turn from 
Old Street, and envelops you. There are high, 
black tenement houses . There are low cottages 
and fumbling passages. There are mellow 
fried-fish shops at every few yards. There 
are dirty beer-houses and a few public-houses. 
There are numerous cast -off clothing salons. 
And there are screeching Cockney women, raw 
and raffish, brutalized children, and men who 
would survive in the fiercest jungle. Also 



300 A BASHER'S NIGHT 

there is the Britannia Theatre and Hotel. 
The old Brit. ! It stands, with Sadler's Wells 
and the Surrey, as one of the oldest homes of 
fustian drama. Sadler's Wells is now a pic- 
ture palace, and the Surrey is a two -houses 
Variety show. The old Brit, held out longest, 
but even that is going now. Its annual panto- 
mime was one of the events of the London 
season for the good Bohemian. Then all the 
Gallery First Nighters boys and girls would 
go down on the last night, which was Benefit 
Night for Mrs. Sara Lane, the proprietress. 
Not only were bouquets handed up, but the 
audience showered upon her tributes in more 
homely and substantial form. Here was a fine 
outlet for the originality of the crowd, and 
among the things that were passed over the 
orchestra-rails or lowered from boxes and 
circles were chests of drawers, pairs of corsets, 
stockings, pillow-cases, washhand jugs and 
basins, hip-baths, old boots, mince-pies, 
Christmas puddings, bottles of beer, and 
various items of lumber and rubbish which 
aroused healthy and Homeric laughter at the 
moment, but which, set down in print at a 
time when Falstaman humour has departed 
from us, may arouse nothing but a curled lip 
and a rebuke. But it really was funny to see 
the stage littered with these tributes, which, 
as I say, included objects which are never 
exhibited in the light of day to a mixed 
company . 

But the cream of Hoxton is its yobs. It is 
the toughest street in London. I don't mean 



HOXTON 301 

that it is dangerous. But if you want danger, 
you have only to ask for it, and it is yours. 
It will not be offered you anywhere in London, 
but if you do ask for it, Hoxton is the one place 
where there is "no waiting," as the barbers 
say. The old Shoreditch Nile is near at hand, 
and you know what that was in the old days. 
Well, Hoxton to-day does its best to maintain 
the tradition of " The Nile." 

Now once upon a time there was a baby- 
journalist, named Simple Simon. He went 
down to Hoxton one evening, after dinner. 
It had been the good old English dinner of 
Simpson's, preceded by two vermuths, accom- 
panied by a pint of claret, and covered in the 
retreat by four maraschinos. It was a pic- 
turesque night. A clammy fog blanketed the 
whole world. It swirled and swirled. Hoxton 
Street was a glorious dream, as enticingly in- 
definite as an opium-sleep. Simple Simon had 
an appointment here. The boys were to be out 
that night. Jimmie Flanagan, their leader, had 
passed the word to Simon that something 
would be doing, something worth being in. 
For that night was to witness the complete and 
enthusiastic bashing of Henry Wiggin, the 
copper's nark, the most loathed and spurned 
of all creeping things that creep upon the 
earth . 

Simon walked like a lamb into the arms of 
trouble. He strolled along the main street, 
peering every yard of his way through the 
writhing gloom. Nobody was about. He 
reached Bell Yard, and turned into it. Then 



302 A BASHER'S NIGHT 

he heard something. Something that brought 
him to a sharp halt. Before he saw or heard 
anything more definite, he felt that he was 
surrounded. To place direction of sound was 
impossible. He heard, from every side, like 
the whisper of a load of dead leaves, the rush 
of rubber shoes. With some agility he leaped 
to what he thought was the clear side, only to 
take a tight arm like a rope across his chest 
and another about his knees. 

" There's one fer yew, 'Enry ! " cried a 
spirited voice as a spirited palm smote him 
on the nose. 

" Hi ! Hi ! Easy ! " Simon appealed. " I 
ain't 'Enry, dammit ! You're bashing me — me 
—Simon ! " He swore rather finely ; but the 
fog, the general confusion, and, above all, the 
enthusiasm of bashing rendered identification 
by voice impracticable. Indeed, if any heard 
it, it had no effect ; for, so they had some one 
to bash, they would bash. It didn't matter to 
them, just so it was a bash. Flanagan heard 
it quite clearly, but he knew the madness of 
attempting to stop eleven burly Hoxton yobs 
once they were well in. . . . 

" I'm not 'Enry. I ain't the nark ! " But 
he was turned face downward, and his mouth 
was over a gully-hole, so that his protest scared 
only the rats in the sewer. He set his teeth, 
and writhed and jerked and swung, and for 
some seconds no bashing could proceed, for 
he was of the stuff of which swordsmen are 
made— small, lithe, and light : useless in a 
stand-up fight with fists, but good for anything 



HOXTON 303 

in a scrum. When, however, as at present, 
eleven happy lads were seeking each a grip 
on his person, it became difficult to defeat their 
purpose. But at last, as he was about to make 
a final wrench at the expense of his coat, the 
metal tips on his boots undid him. He dug 
his heels backward to get a purchase, he 
struck the slippery surface of the kerb instead 
of the yielding wood of the roadway, and in a 
moment he was down beyond all struggle. A 
foot landed feelingly against his ribs, another 
took him on the face ; and for all that they 
were rubbered they stung horribly. Then, with 
two pairs of feet on his stomach, and two on 
his legs, he heard that wild whisper that may 
unnerve the stoutest. 

" Orf wi' yer belts, boys ! " 

The bashing of the nark was about to begin. 
There was a quick jingle as half a dozen belts 
were loosed, followed by a whistle, and— Z pi! 
he received the accolade of narkhood. Again 
and again they came, and they stung and bit, 
and he could not move. They spat all about 
him. He swore crudely but sincerely, and if 
oaths have any potency his tormentors should 
have withered where they stood. Two and 
three at a time they came, for there were eleven 
of them— Flanagan having discreetly retired— 
and all were anxious to christen their nice new 
belts on the body of the hated nark ; and they 
did so zealously, while Simon could only lie 
still and swear and pray for a happy moment 
that should free one of his hands. . . . 

He knew it was a mistake, and he kept his 

i 



304 A BASHER'S NIGHT 

temper so far as possible. But human nature 
came out with the weals and bruises. He 
didn't want to do the dirty on them, he didn't 
want to take extreme steps, but dammit, this 
was the frozen limit. He knew that when their 
mistake was pointed out they would offer lavish 
apologies and pots of four-'arf, but the flesh 
is only the flesh . 

" Turn the blanker over ! " 

In that moment, as he was lifted round, his 
left hand was freed. In a flash it fumbled at 
his breast. Twisting" his head aside, he got 
something between his teeth, and through the 
fetid fog went the shiver and whine of the 
Metropolitan Police Call. Three times he 
blew, with the correct inflection. 

At the first call he was dropped like a hot 
coal. From other worlds came an answering 
call. He blew again. Then, like thin jets of 
water, whistles spurted from every direction. 
He heard the sound of scuttering feet as his 
enemies withdrew. He heard the sound of 
scuttering feet as they closed in again. But he 
was not waiting for trouble. He pulled his 
burning self together, and ran for the lights 
that stammered through the gloom at the 
Britannia. He whistled as he ran. Curses 
followed him. 

At the Britannia he collided with a slow 
constable. He flung a story at him. The 
constable inspected him, and took notes. The 
lurking passages began to brighten with life, 
and where, a moment ago, was sick torpidity 
was now movement, clamour. Distant whistles 



HOXTON 305 

still cried. The place tingled with nervous 
life. 

Some cried "Whassup?" and some cried 
" Stanback cancher ! " They stared, bobbed, 
inquired, conjectured. The women were 
voluble. The men spat. A forest of faces 
grew up about Simple Simon. A hurricane of 
hands broke about his head. The constable 
took notes, and whistled. A humorist 
appeared. 

" 'Ullo, 'ullo, 'ullo ! Back water there, some 
of yer. Stop yer shoving. Ain't nobody bin 
asking for me? Stop the fight. I forbid the 
bangs ! " 

But he was not popular. They jostled 
him. 

" 'Ere," cried some one, " let some one else 
have a see, Fatty ! Other people wanter have 
a see, don't they? " 

" Stanback— stanback ! Why cancher stan- 
back ! " 

Fatty inquired if Someone wanted a smash 
over the snitch. Because, if so . . . 

A woman held that Simple Simon had a 
rummy hat on. There were pauses, while the 
crowd waited and shuffled its feet, as between 
the acts. 

Fatty asked why some one didn't do 
something. Alwis the way, though — them 
police. Stanback — git back on yer mat, 
Toby. 

And then . . . and then the swelling, 
clamorous, complaining crowd swooped in on 
itself with a sudden undeniable movement. Its 

20 



306 A BASHER'S NIGHT 

centre flattened, wavered, broke, and the im- 
pelling force was brought face to face with 
Simple Simon and the constable. It was 
Flanagan and the boys. 

Three pairs of arms collared the constable 
low. Simple Simon felt a jerk on his arm 
that nearly pulled it from its socket, and a 
crackling like sandpaper at his ear. " Bolt 
for it ! " 

And he would have done so, but at that 
moment the answering whistles leaped to a 
sharper volume, and through the distorting fog 
came antic shapes of blue, helmeted. The 
lights of the Britannia rose up. Panic smote 
the crowd, and for a moment there was a fury 
of feet. 

Women screamed. Others cried for help. 
Some one cried, " Hot stuff, boys— let 'em 'ave 
it where it 'urts most ! " 

Fatty cried : " Git orf my foot ! If I find 
the blank blank blank what trod on my blank 
blank 'and, I'll ! " 

" Look out, boys ! Truncheons are out ! " 

They ran, slipped, fell, rolled. A cold voice 
from a remote window remarked, above the 
din, that whatever he'd done he'd got a rummy 
hat on. A young girl was pinioned against 
the wall by a struggling mass for whom there 
was no way. There was in the air an 
imminence of incident, acid and barbed. The 
girl screamed. She implored. Then, with a 
frantic movement, her free hand flew to her 
hat. She withdrew something horrid, and 
brought it down, horridly, three times. Three 



HOXTON 307 

shrieks flitted from her corner like sparks from 
a funnel. But her passage was cleared. 

Then some important fool pulled the fire- 
alarm . 

" Stanback, Stinkpot, cancher ? Gawd, if I 
cop that young 'un wi' the bashed 'elmet, I'll 
learn him hell ! " 

" If I cop 'old of the blanker what trod on 
my 'and, I'll ! " 

" No, but — 'e 'ad a rummy 'at on. 'E 
'ad." 

Away distant, one heard the brazen voice of 
the fire-engine, clanging danger through the 
yellow maze of Hoxton streets. There was 
the jangle of harness and bells ; the clop- 
clop of hoofs, rising to a clatter. There was 
the scamper of a thousand feet as the engine 
swung into the street with the lordliest flourish 
and address. Close behind it a long, lean 
red thing swayed to and fro, like some ancient 
dragon seeking its supper. 

"Whichway, whichway, whichway?" it 
roared . 

"Ever bin had?" cried the humorist. 
' There ain't no pleading fire ! This is a 
picnic, this is. 'Ave a banana?" 

'Which way?" screamed the engine. 
" Don't no one know which way? " 

The humorist answered them by a gesture 
known in polite circles as a " raspberry." Then 
a constable, with fierce face, battered helmet, 
and torn tunic, and with an arm -lock on a 
perfectly innocent non-combatant, flung com- 
mands in rapid gusts :— 



308 A BASHER'S NIGHT 

" This way, Fire. King's name. Out 
hoses ! " 

The fog rolled and rolled. The Britannia 
gleamed on the scene with almost tragic 
solemnity. Agonized shapes rushed hither and 
thither. Women screamed. Then a rich Irish 
voice sang loud above all : " Weeny, boys I " 

As the firemen leaped from their perches on 
the engine to out hoses, so, mysteriously, did 
the combat cease. Constables found them- 
selves, in a moment, wrestling with thick fog 
and nothing more. The boys were gone. Only 
women screamed. 

Some one said : " If I cop a hold of the 
blankety blank blanker what trod on my 
blanking 'and, I'll just about ! " 

On the word " Weeny " Simple Simon was 
once again jerked by the arm, and hustled 
furiously down passages, round corners, and 
through alleyways, finally to be flung into the 
misty radiance of Shoreditch High Street, with 
the terse farewell : " Now run— for the love of 
glory, run ! " 

But he didn't. 'He stood still against a 
friendly wall, and suffered. He straightened 
his dress. He touched sore places with a 
tender solicitude. 'His head was racking. All 
his limbs ached and burned. He desired 
nothing but the cold sheets of his bed and a 
bottle of embrocation. He swore at the fog, 
with a fine relish for the colour of sounds. 
He swore at things that were in no way respon- 
sible for his misfortune. Somewhere, he con- 
jectured, in warmth and safety, Henry Wiggin, 



HOXTON 309 

the copper's nark, was peacefully enjoying his 
supper of fried fish and 'taters and stout. 

And then, over the sad yellow night, faint 
and sweet and far away, as the memory of 
childhood, came a still small voice :— 

" No, but 'e 'ad a rummy 'at on, eh? " 



A HARD LABOUR NIGHT 
FLEET STREET 



STREET OF PAIN 

Queen of all streets, you stand alway 
Lovely by dusk or dark or day. 
Cruellest of streets that I do know, 
I love you wheresoever I go. 

The daytime knows your lyric wonder : 
Your tunes that rhyme and chime and thunder, 
And exiles vision with delight 
Your million-blossomed charm of night. 

Sweet frivolous frock and fragant face 
Your shadow-fretted pavements trace; 
And all about your haunted mile 
Hangs a soft air, a girlish smile. 

But other steps make echo here, 
With curse and prayer and wasted tear, 
And under the silver wings of sleep 
Your desolate step-children creep. 

Street of all fair streets fairest — say 
Why thus we love you night and day j 
And why we love you last and best 
Whose hearts were broken on your breast ! 



A HARD LABOUR NIGHT 

FLEET STREET 

Years and years ago there was a young fool 
who tried very hard to get into Fleet Street ; 
and could not. So that he went away grieved 
and full of strange oaths. 

For the last five years a young man has 
gone about trying very hard to get out of 
Fleet Street ; and he cannot. So that he goes 
about grieved and full of strange oaths. 

If I knew a man whom I disliked so in- 
tensely as to wish to do him an injury — the 
idea is unthinkable, for I am the sweetest of 
men—I should get him a job in Fleet Street. 
Any job would do, but preferably I should 
get him a job on a certain halfpenny daily, 
which I will not name, lest the tricky little 
law of England command me to pay several 
hundred pounds for telling the truth. 

I have worked on that paper. I have 
worked, too, in the City as an office-boy — 
fifty hours a week for a contemptuous wage 
—but that life I think was as heaven com- 
pared with working for the unmentionable 
newspaper. I hate work, but at the same time, 
like most lazy people, I am capable of the 



314 A HARD LABOUR NIGHT 

most terrific labour when necessary. It was 
not the slave-driving in this office that drove 
me to blasphemy ; it was the thousand petty 
insults and contempts to which one was sub- 
jected by the editorial gods. I have worked 
on many papers in the Street of a Thousand 
Sorrows, and everywhere I have found good- 
fellowship and generosity— except on that 
paper. There I found nothing but bad 
manners and general ill-breeding. They 
drew most of their staff from Oxford ; the 
remainder came from Hounslow or Hoxton, 
I forget which. 

I was seventeen when I first joined that 
joyful army of all-night workers, which in- 
cludes printers, policemen, coffee -stall keepers, 
postal workers, scavengers, sewer-men, road- 
watchmen, wharf-minders, river-men, hotel 
porters, railwaymen, stewards on night ex- 
presses, and— journalists. Of course, Fleet 
Street was familiar to me long before that. 
I entered the great game of letters at the age 
of fifteen when I was an office-boy and sold 
a horrific slum story to a popular penny paper 
for the home. The best parts of my " atmo- 
sphere " were, of course, cut out by the kindly 
editor who watched over the morals of the 
English home. But the sale of that story 
decided me. I would write. I did. At 
fifteen and a half I was writing funny columns 
for Ally Slope r's Half Holiday. For Heaven's 
sake, don't laugh ! You would hardly under- 
stand what Ally Sloper's Half Holiday meant 
to me at that time. It meant Life. The 



FLEET STREET 3*5 

cheques, infinitesimal as they were, gave me all 
that Life has to offer Uo the best of us. They 
gave me books, pictures, concerts, week-ends 
out of town, music-halls, wine, bus-rides, a 
rare cab, and— oh, lots of things to eat. I 
never knew the name of the young man who 
was editing Ally Slope r at that time, but, 
though at ten years' distance I suppose he will 
hardly be able to see me, I take off my hat to 
him. I bow. I should like to run to meet him, 
to take his hand, and tell him how much I 
loved him then but dared not speak my mind 
because he was an editor ; and how much 
I love him now. I owe him a thousand beau- 
tiful things. I owe him most all the subtle 
essences of life that have come to me and 
which my palate has appreciated. If he sees 
these lines, I hope he will communicate and 
remember that I am to be found in the 
smoking-room at Anderton's every Monday 
and Thursday afternoon at three o'clock, when 
I will buy him as many old brandies as he 
deigns to call for. 

He encouraged me in my work, and soon 
I was embarked on a career of crime from 
which I have found it impossible to break 
away. I am one of the many unfortunates 
who are never happy away from London. 
Often, when I have been overworking, which 
I do once a month, my women -folk say— The 
Sea. So I go to the sea, and am no sooner 
sweeping through the suburbs than a heart- 
breaking sickness comes over me for London 
and the white light of Fleet Street. I have 



316 A HARD LABOUR NIGHT 

never in my life been away for more than 
a few days ; and that only happened because 
I had spent all my money, and had to wait 
until supplies were sent me. Often when on 
the Continent I have had to rush back 
on the tenth day, just to see Fleet Street and 
the Strand ; and I have an immense sympathy 
with that legendary person who is reported 
to have answered the inquiry of a friend who 
had left London one Saturday and returned 
on Monday morning. The week-ender asked 
jocularly, " How's London looking now ? " 
The patriot asked, " When d'you see her last? " 
" Saturday." " My God," said the patriot, 
" you ought to see her now ! " 

Week-end breaks irritate and unsettle me. 
I believe that all good Cockneys loathe the 
seaside, though for some reason their natural 
pluck deserts them, and they hesitate to say 
so. I detest it. If I may paraphrase a Fifth 
Avenue sentiment, " It's little old London for 
mine ! " If I am run down, give me the glitter 
of the Strand, the subdued clamour of Fleet 
Street, and the little fogs of North London. 
Away from London I cannot work— I cannot 
think. Something is missing — it's London, 
London air, London food, London girls, 
London spirits. Fven when I lived in the 
suburbs — at Blackheath or Eltham or Barnet 
—I breathed a sigh of relief when my morning 
train flung me into Cannon Street or King's 
Cross, just as I do when I visit Bayswater, and 
catch the 'bus back to civilization — Fleet Street. 
I cannot conceive any more banal form of 



FLEET STREET 317 

entertainment than seaside resorts. They give 
me nothing but acute depression. I can quite 
understand the secret of the number of suicides 
that take place every summer on the English 
coasts. I am fighting myself the whole time 
I am at any of these places — fighting the black 
dog of physical and mental melancholia . There 
is a dreary waste of sea, every bit of it like 
the other bits. There are flashy girls. There 
are unhappy invalids. There are gross-legged 
old ladies paddling. There are cheap, scabby 
Italian restaurants, full of flies and garlic and 
cold fried fish. There are horrible bands. 
There is everywhere a sense of futility. And 
the ozone. ... I blaspheme. There is— and 
I believe doctors will confirm' this statement 
— no air in the world like that of London for 
the person who is overdone. I know, for I 
have tried it. When I have spent forty nights 
in succession in Fleet Street, and rolled home 
at three o'clock every morning, I get, so they 
tell me, run down. But I don't go to the 
seaside now. I go for 'bus -rides round little 
old London. 

Really, the country is a disgusting place to 
which to send a nervous type. I never can 
feel comfortable there, and I suppose I never 
shall. I cannot even be sociable. Even a 
crowd in the country conveys a haunting sug- 
gestion of loneliness. And when I look out 
on the silly blank hills, and then look at the 
clock and see that it is nine, I think of the 
boys slaving under the lamps of Fleet Street, 
and every sinew of me aches for it. I can 



318 A HARD LABOUR NIGHT 

hardly keep away from the railway -station. I 
go for walks, but always the walk brings me 
near the station, and I watch the trains going 
up, and wonder when the next will be, and, 
usually, I take my courage and bad manners 
in both hands, and bolt into the booking-office 
without any further farewells to my host. And 
when the train rumbles into Waterloo or 
Charing Cross or Victoria then I am myself 
again, and everything in the garden is, as the 
phrase goes, lovely. 

But of late years I have been trying to quit 
Fleet Street ; and I find that it cannot be 
done. Difficult to get into, it is more difficult 
to quit. Once it has got you, you belong no 
more to yourself. However you may hate it, 
you will always come back to it. It is like 
a divorced wife . You cannot keep away from 
it, and you hate yourself every time you go 
near it. I have worked on six newspapers. 
I have told lies and suppressed the truth with 
the best of them. I have done everything, 
from subbing to specialling. I have written 
stories and expanded telegrams. I have 
written political poems and squibs for the 
Liberals, and I have written gorgeous eulogies 
of Conservatism. I have written funny 
" fourth-page " articles and serious leaders. 
And I have written London Letters. 

Have you ever watched the procession of 
pressmen in Fleet Street ? It is a moving 
pageant. It begins at five o'clock every 
evening, and continues until six. It repeats 
itself, later, from midnight until half-past one 



FLEET STREET 3*9 

in the morning. There they go — the noble 
army of tatterdermalions . The first forces of 
the world, made more glorious by their cloak 
of anonymity, the men who shake the hemi- 
spheres with phrases, there they are — derelicts 
in Mooney's bar, in the damned and dusty 
Bohemia of Fleet Street. Threadbare, hard- 
up, dirty-collared, what care they? Nothing. 
They have no hope — therefore, they have no 
fear. Mostly they are the subs, or the para- 
graphers of the provincial London Letters. 
Paragraphers are paid on space rate — that is, 
by the line. You write a nice little paragraph 
of ten lines, and you find it cut down to two. 
As twopence is useless for anything, you go 
and have a drink with it. . . . Following 
these come the well-dressed battalion — junior 
reporters, senior reporters, and those gorgeous 
humming-birds, the Specials. The derelicts 
are of the Old School, which is making 
its last gallant rally at the Press Club. The 
smartly dressed are the New School. ... A 
cold-blooded, unpleasant crowd. They are in- 
human, too ; they don't drink until they have 
finished work. They go round and produce 
their bloodless little articles on dry ginger and 
coffee. I don't like them at all. That kind 
of man would stoop to any trick which he 
could, by moral laws, justify ; and moral laws 
justify any kind of underhandedness . The 
only law that any man should follow is the 
law of immorality— that is, the law of human 
kindliness . 

I worked a few years ago at an office which 



320 A HARD LABOUR NIGHT 

stands almost on the spot where Fleet Street 
crashes into Ludgate Circus, and where you 
may gloat upon the glory of The Street— the 
grave beauty of the tower of St. Dunstan's- 
in-the-West. There, under the white light and 
the throb of the presses, I worked from seven 
in the evening until close on twelve. The 
atmosphere of a morning newspaper -office is 
anomalous. It is an atmosphere of fever-heat, 
yet with no visible signs of fever. Every- 
where is a subdued rush. There seems 
to be no order. On the other hand, there is 
no panic ; everybody is supremely casual . 
Every night everything goes wrong. Routine 
does not exist. Hustle does not exist. It is 
as though everybody were told to get the paper 
out. The result is that everybody rushes about 
doing the other man's work. At about the 
time for putting the paper to bed they dis- 
cover what has been happening. So they scrap 
that paper and produce another. ... It was 
a fascinating game. Most of the gang on 
that paper— it was not the nasty one which I 
first mentioned— were of the old school, old 
boy, the old school. They taught me how to 
succeed in Fleet Street. They took me to the 
now -vanished " Green Dragon " and intro- 
duced me to the lady of the house. They took 
me to Anderton's. They took me to " The 
Cheshire Cheese," to " The Cock," to The 
Press Club, to Simpson's, to Mooney's to El 
Vino, to " King and Keys," and to the Punch 
Tavern. I was an apt pupil. There was 
hardly a night when I did not go home feel- 



FLEET STREET 321 

ing that life was gay and that Nothing Really 
Mattered. Next evening I would go to the 
office feeling very serious. I would do my 
work, and decide that the drinking game had 
better be cut out. So towards midnight we 
would leave in a bunch, and go to an estab- 
lishment known to one of the party where we 
could get drinks all night, and then we would 
drink . . . and have another . . . and have 
another . . . and do have another, old chap. 
We did not drink because we were tired and 
felt the necessity of recuperating our energies. 
We did not drink because we were sad. We 
did not drink because we were jolly. We 
drank because we drank. . . . 

Within the last nine years things have 
changed in Fleet Street. I suppose it is better 
for the morals and the physique of the boys. 
But it has certainly not added one jot to the 
stock of human pleasure. It has robbed Fleet 
Street of kindliness, good-fellowship, and self- 
sacrifice. It has given it instead a cold 
efficiency, a determination to " get there " ; 
and the young man of Fleet Street to-day 
refrains from drinking only, one feels, with 
one motive : that is, to best the other man. 
He knows that if he keeps sober he will be 
able to kick from under him the man who is 
gay and a little lazy and very expansive. . . . 

In the subbing-rooms of the paper the 
physical atmosphere was oppressive. In- 
variably the windows were closed to keep 
out the importunate roar of Ludgate Circus, 
and the place reeked of stale beer, stale tobacco 

21 



322 A HARD LABOUR NIGHT 

smoke, and last night's fried fish. The floor 
was littered with " exchanges " and cuttings 
and flimsies. The infernal tick-tack of the 
tape-machines hammered on the brain. The 
hum of the presses hammered on the brain. 
And the conversation of the chief sub. ham- 
mered on the brain. Boys rushed in. Boys 
rushed out. Whether they rushed in or out, 
they were sworn at. Printers came in. 
Printers went out. Whether they went in or 
out, they were never sworn at. For the Printer 
is the god of every newspaper -office. The 
Editor, the Business Manager, the Advertise- 
ment Manager— these are as naught before the 
Printer. And, by the way, if you notice a very 
seedy, down-at-heel person parading the 
corridors of newspaper-offices, do not jump 
to the conclusion that he is a paragrapher or 
a sub. The hangers-on of newspaper -offices 
dress like a second-hand misfit shop. The 
reporters and specials and critics dress like 
Burlington Arcade. But the Editor outdoes 
even the liners in shabbiness and frayed linen. 
The liners dress shabbily because they cannot 
afford to dress well. The special dresses well 
because he cannot afford to dress shabbily. 
But the Editor dresses shabbily because he can 
jolly well afford to please himself. 

Sometimes, if there was very little doing, or 
if we were in desperate mood, we would band 
up with a few others, and sally Westwards 
for the evening. Usually it was a square feed 
at Simpson's. I never knew the old Simpson's ; 
I have only known it within the last eight 



FLEET STREET 323 

years. But that half-crown dinner is heaven 
to the hungry man. You are always certain 
of the very best meat at Simpson's — and a 
lot of it. I still remember having three goes 
at a saddle of mutton that was wheeled round 
on the great dinner-wagon, with English vege- 
tables and red-currant jelly. Thence we 
moved on to the Alhambra. I don't know 
why, but whenever we did take a night off the 
programme was always the same : aperitifs at 
Anderton's, dinner at Simpson's, and then the 
Alhambra lounge. Oh, the high talk that we 
have held in the lounge on the Alhambra 
balcony ! We talked of nothing but the Things 
that Matter. I don't mean by that phrase 
what you mean ; the silly worship of the Idea 
was not for us. Our festal table concerned 
itself only with the things that really do matter 
to all of us — the money we were not making, 
the price of food, the rates, of how we had 
bedded out our tulips, of how our daffodils 
were taking the winds of March with beauty, 
how the baby was getting on, who would win 
the big fight, what would win the big race. 
We talked of Love, Wines, Dinners, Music- 
halls, of the men we had knocked about with, 
the girls we had loved, and the piano or dog 
we had bought, and the new suits we had 
ordered. Great nights . . . Great talk. We 
were very young fools, you know. 

It is curious, though, what high talk is held 
in these places. Philosophy, religion, art, sex, 
birth, death, the occult, and a hundred other 
abstrusenesses are talked of there by garish 



324 A HARD LABOUR NIGHT 

girls and solemn, sleepy men. But never — oh, 
never, the frivolous. It is the rarest thing in 
the world to hear a note of laughter. Scarce 
ever do you catch a spontaneous smile. For 
this is one of the Gay Places of London. . . . 

The voices of the women eat like acid 
through the tumult of the bar and the subdued 
clamour from the far-away stage and orchestra. 

The air is laden with mephitic perfume, but 
the lounge is fitted up somewhat after the 
manner of Omar Khayyam's tent, so that the 
details seem correct. The men are opulent, 
flushed from the festival of their success . They 
look masterfully at the lights, the stage, the 
barbaric gilt, the material evidence of their 
triumph, and at the women. The women smile 
slow smiles with gleaming lips, inviting atten- 
tion to their persons, sometimes offering the 
men the " k'rect card." The smoke curls like 
snakes from the cigarettes ; the light falls on 
the amber beers and on the evil tint of creme 
de menthe . The men gulp and the women 
sip ; and animation courses steadily over the 
dull face of the commonplace. Released sud- 
denly, they know not how, from the thousand 
fetters, cautions, fears, of daily life, the men 
grow bold. Their voices rise. A lyric note 
of challenge springs from a hundred imprisoned 
hearts. 

So it was with the slaves of the lamp and 
the pen, as we theatrically called ourselves. 
We had escaped, and we cut loose while we 
might. My special friend, Georgie, invariably 
grew autobiographic on these occasions. I 



FLEET STREET 3 2 5 

remember one evening when he electrified the 
bar by quoting Old Q. unconsciously, and at 
the top of, his voice. "Yes," he yelled, 
" I only loved one girl in my life. But I've 
kissed her on seventy different faces — what? 
When d'you have your first love — eh? I'm not 
talking loud, am I ? " 

I told him that his voice was a little insistent, 
perhaps, but nothing noticeable ; and I also 
told him that my first love-affair happened 
when I was eight years old, when, one frosty 
November night, I passed a little girl in a red 
frock, in a dark, suburban street, and she 
looked back at me and smiled ; and I went 
after her and squeezed her hand, and she 
laughed ; and how I kissed her, and have 
loved her ever since. Georgie said I was talk- 
ing too loudly. Then the lounge began to get 
interested, and the chucker-out came up and 
asked did we mind shutting up, because we 
were beginning to be a beastly nuisance. Then 
Georgie, who at that time was editing an 
abridged edition of Goethe, and was carrying 
a small volume of the poet's aphorisms, opened 
it and read aloud to the company. After that, 
we had to go . The same evening I sent through 
a little triolet to the editor of the occ. column, 
and a day later it duly appeared : — 

That useful Thursday night we spent 

With Goethe at the music-hall, 
Was quite a pastime fit for Lent. 
That useful Thursday night we spent ! 
But richer far in high content 

Was one that we would fain recall — 
That youthful Thursday night we spent 

With Gertie at the music-hall. 



326 A HARD LABOUR NIGHT 

It was in that silly fashion that we tried to 
extract something of the honey of life from 
our deadly routine. For when we worked, 
we worked. There were nights when we 
scribbled furiously against time and the printer. 
There were nights when terrible news would 
come in at ten o'clock, such as the story of 
the assassination of the King of Portugal, which 
arrived late one Sunday night. Monday's 
paper had then to be cut up. The news page 
had to be re-cast. Pictures had to be got. 
And solemn leaders had to be written, as well 
as personal articles, intimate and authoritative 
— " King Carlos : The Man : by One Who 
Knew Him." As a matter of fact, that event 
caught us down and out. Nobody in the office 
knew anything about King Carlos. The library 
contained nothing, and the reference books 
were silent. Our leader on the tragic affair 
was a beautiful piece of mosaic. The opening 
paragraph was written by the literary editor. 
The political editor suggested a point of view. 
The Chief wrote a masterful rhetorical para- 
graph, full of sound and signifying nothing. 
And the Foreign Editor foreshadowed possible 
European complications . While that was being 
done the whole staff was careering furiously 
around London in cabs, trying to interview 
Consuls and Secretaries of Legations and inter- 
national financiers. 

Newspaper interviews are terrible affairs. 
Usually they have to be done at two minutes' 
notice, and, on such notice, the personage inter- 
viewed finds himself dumb. You have to in- 



FLEET STREET 327 

vent the stuff yourself, and if the subject is 
(as it always is) one about which you are 
completely ignorant, the task is not an easy 
one. I remember an occasion when I was dis- 
patched, by the London office of a northern 
paper, to find Emma Goldman, the anarchist. 
She was then visiting London, and had last 
been seen in Clerkenwell. It was a night of 
winter and of terrific rain. It came down in 
sheets. For four hours I chased her. I could 
not take a cab, as no driver would have found 
his way to the obscure spots which I was seek- 
ing. North, South, East, West, I chased her. 
At Clerkenwell I heard that she might be found 
at Islington. There I learnt that she was in 
Kingsland Road. Kingsland Road said Shep- 
herd's Bush. At Shepherd's Bush I was told 
to try Old Ford. At Old Ford they said 
Stepney ; and there, at last, I found her in a 
little, dirty coffee -shop. 

Subsequently, on my return journey to Fleet 
Street, I had the pleasure of being myself 
chased by the rebellious Emma's satellites, who 
seemed to doubt if I really were the respectable 
journalist I claimed to be. 

Apart from newspaper work, I have done 
more than enough of interviewing for the 
popular weeklies. Have you read articles on 
The Future of the Motor-Bus, by the biggest 
man in that industry? Have you read articles 
on The Future of Spanish Diplomacy, by a 
prominent leader of Spanish thought? Have 
you read articles on My Career by this or that 
actor, musician, golfer, cricketer, barrister? 



328 A HARD LABOUR NIGHT 

Have you read My Christmas Letter to English 
Children by the famous little child actress ? 
Have you read My Story of the Blue Street 
Murder by the Acquitted Prisoner? Have you 
read How I Brought up my Family by A 
Mother of Nineteen ? 

I wrote them. A brief talk with the Great 
Personage who is to sign the article, and then 
it is written. Sometimes he signs it. Some- 
times he never sees it until it is in print, with his 
name to it. An important review article, 
running to 4,000 words, by an eminent Italian, 
which was quoted throughout the press, was 
written in this way, and it was based on the 
shortest interview I have ever had. I tele- 
phoned him, and begged an interview on the 
attitude of Italy. He said : 'I cannot see 
you. I am busy." 

I said : " May I say that you disapprove of 
the attitude of the Italian Government on the 

Question? " 

He said: "Yes." 

I said : " May I put your name to it? " 
He said: " If you like. Good-bye." 
On his " if you like " four thousand words 
were written, and, by way of acknowledgment, 
instead of dining at " The Cock," I cashed the 
big cheque which the article brought me, and 
dined at the Ristorante dTtalia, in Old Compton 
Street, and drank Chianti instead of my usual 
pint of bitter. 



A RUSSIAN NIGHT 
SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY 



STEPNEY CAUSEWAY 

Beyond the pleading lip, the reaching hand, 

Laughter and tear ; 
Beyond the grief that none would understand j 

Beyond all fear. 
Dreams ended, beauty broken, 
Deeds done, and last word spoken, 

Quiet she lies. 

Far, far from our delirious dark and light, 

She finds her sleep. 
No more the noisy silences of night 

Shall hear her weep. 
The blossomed boughs break over 
Her holy breast to cover 

From any eyes. 
Till the stark dawn shall drink the latest star, 

So let her be. 
O Love and Beauty! She has wandered far 

And now comes home to thee. 



A RUSSIAN NIGHT 

SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY 

The Russian quarter always saddens me. For 
one thing, it has associations which scratch 
my heart regularly every month when my 
affairs take me into those parts. Forgetting is 
the most wearisome of all pains to which we 
humans are subject ; and for some of us there 
is so much to forget. For some of us there is 
Beatrice to forget, and Dora, and Christina, 
and the devastating loveliness of Katarina. For 
another thing, its atmosphere is so depressingly 
Slavonic. It is as dismal and as overdone as 
Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor. 
How shall I give you the sharp flavour of it, 
or catch the temper of its streets ? 

It seems impossible that one should ensnare 
its elusive spirit. Words may come, but they 
are words, hard and stiff-necked and pedes- 
trian. One needs symbols and butterflies. 



Beauty is a strange bird. Hither and thither 

she flies, and settles where she will ; and men 

will say that she is found here and here — some- 

331 



332 A RUSSIAN NIGHT 

times in Perugia, sometimes in Mayfair, some- 
times in the Himalaya. I have known men 
who found her in the dark melancholy of Little 
Russia . . . and I can understand them. For 
beauty appears, too, in various guise ; and 
some men adore her in silks and some in rags. 
There are girls in this quarter who will smite 
the heart out of you, whose beauty will cry 
itself into your very blood. White's Row and 
the fastnesses of Stepney do not produce many 
choice blooms ; there are no lilies in these 
gardens of weeds. The girls are not romantic 
to regard or to talk with. They are not even 
clean . The secrets of their toilet are not known 
to me, but I doubt if soap and water ever 
appear in large quantities. And yet . . . 
They walk or lounge, languorous and heavy- 
lidded, yet with a curious suggestion of 
smouldering fire in their drowsy gaze. Rich, 
olive-skinned faces they have, and hair either 
gloomy or brassy, and caressing voices with 
the lisp of Bethnal Green. You may see them 
about the streets which they have made their 
own, carrying loads of as enchanting curls as 
Murger's Mimi. 

But don't run away with the idea that they 
are wistful, or luscious, or romantic ; they are 
not. Go and mix with them if you nurse that 
illusion. Wistfulness and romance are in the 
atmosphere, but the people are practical . . . 
more practical and much less romantic than 
Mr. John Jenkinson of Golder's Green. 

You may meet them in the restaurants of 
Little Montagu Street, Osborn Street, and the 



SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY 333 

byways off Brick Lane. The girls are mostly 
cigarette -makers, employed at one of the 
innumerable tobacco factories in the district. 
Cigarette -maker recalls " Carmen " and Marion 
Crawford's story ; but here are only the squalid 
and the beastly. Brick Lane and the im- 
mediate neighbourhood hold many factories, 
each with a fine odour — bed-flock, fur, human 
hair, and the slaughter-house. Mingle these 
with sheep -skins warm from the carcass, and 
the decaying refuse in every gutter, and you 
will understand why I always smoke cigars in 
Spitalfields. In these cafes I have met on 
occasion those serio -comics, Louise Michel, 
Emma Goldmann, and Chicago May. Beilis, 
the hero of the blood-ritual trial, was here 
some months ago ; and Enrico Malatesta has 
visited, too. Among the men — fuzzy-bearded, 
shifty-eyed fellows — there are those who have 
been to Siberia and back. But do not ask 
them about Siberia, nor question how they got 
back. There are some things too disgusting 
even to talk about. Siberia is not exciting; 
it is . . . filthy. But you may sit among 
them, the men and the dark, gazelle -eyed girls ; 
and you may take caviar, tea -and -lemon, and 
black bread ; and conversation will bring you 
a proffered cigarette. 

It was in these streets that I first met that 
giant of letters, Mr. W. G. Waters, better 
known to the newspaper public as " Spring 
Onions," but unfortunately I did not meet him 
in his gay days, but in his second period, his 
regeneracy. He was introduced to me as a 



334 A RUSSIAN NIGHT 

fearsome rival in the subtle art of Poesy. I 
stood him a cup of cocoa, for you know, if 
you read your newspaper, that Spring is a tee- 
totaller. He signed the pledge, at the request 
of Sir John Dickinson, then magistrate at 
Thames Police Court, in 1898, and it is his 
proud boast that he has kept it ever since. 
He is now seventy-nine. His father died of 
drink at thirty-seven, and Dean Farrar once 
told Spring that his case was excusable, since 
it was hereditary. But, although Spring went 
to prison at the age of thirteen for drunken- 
ness, and has " been in " thirty-nine times, he 
didn't die at thirty-seven. I wonder what the 
moral is ? His happiest days, he assured me, 
were spent in old Clerkenwell Prison, now 
Clerkenwell Post Office, and, on one occasion, 
as he was the only prisoner who could read, he 
was permitted to entertain his companions by 
extracts from Good Words, without much 
effect, he added, as most of them are in and 
out even now. One important factor in the 
making of his grand resolution was that a 
girl he knew in Stepney, who was so far 
gone that even the Court missionary had 
given her up, came to him one Christmas- 
time. She was in the depths of misery and 
hunger . 

" Spring," she said, " give me a job ! " 
So Spring gave her the job of cleaning out 
his one room, for which she was to receive 
half a crown. She obeyed him; and when 
he returned, and looked under the floor where 
he stored his savings from the sale of his 



SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY 335 

poems (nearly seven pounds) he found them 
gone. 

That settled it. Spring decided to cut all 
his acquaintances, but he could only do that 
successfully by some very public step. So he 
went to Sir John Dickinson and signed the 
pledge in his presence . Said he — 

" And now, I find that after fifteen years 
of teetotalism, I write better poetry. Every 
time I feel I want a drink, I say to meself : 
' Spring— sit down and write a poem ! ' " 

He is now messenger at Thames Police 
Court, enjoying the friendship and interest of 
all. He read me about a dozen of his 
lighter lyrics. Here is one of the finer gems : — 

How many a poet would like to have 
Letters from royalty — prince, king, and queen ; 
But, like some insignificant ocean wave, 
They are passed over, mayhap never seen. 
But when I myself address good Royals, 
And send them verses from my fertile brain, 
See how they thank me very much for my flowing 
strain ! 

In proof of which he will show you letters from 
King Edward, Queen Alexandra, and Queen 
Mary. 

One of these days I am going to do a book 
about those London characters without refer- 
ence to whom our daily newspaper is incom- 
plete. I mean people like the late lamented 
Craig, the poet of the Oval Cricket Ground, 
Captain Hunnable, of Ilford, Mr. Algernon 
Ashton, Spiv. Bagster, of Westminster, that gay 
farceur, "D. S. Windell," Stewart Gray, the 



336 A RUSSIAN NIGHT 

Nature enthusiast. But first and foremost must 
come — Spring Onions. 

On the southern side of the quarter is Sidney 
Street, of sinister memory. You remember the 
siege of Sidney Street ? A great time for 
Little Russia. You may remember how the 
police surrounded that little Fort Chabrol. You 
may remember how the deadly aim of Peter 
the Painter and his fellow-conspirators got 
home on the force again and again. You 
remember how the police, in their helplessness 
against such fatalistic defiance of their 
authority, appealed to Government, and how 
Government sent down a detachment of the 
Irish Guards. There was a real Cabinet 
Minister in it, too ; he came down in his motor- 
car to superintend manoeuvres and compliment 
gallant officers on their strategy. And yet, 
in that great contest of four men versus the 
Rest of England, it was the Rest of England 
that went down ; for Fort Chabrol stood its 
ground and quietly laughed. They were never 
beaten ; they never surrendered. When they 
had had enough, they just burnt the house 
over themselves, and . . . hara-kiri. ... Of 
course, it was all very wicked ; it is impossible 
to justify them in any way. In Rayswater 
and all other haunts of unbridled chastity they 
were tortured, burnt alive, stewed in oil, and 
submitted to every conceivable penalty for 
their saucy effrontery. Yet, somehow, there 
was a touch about it, this spectacle of four 
men defying the law and order of the greatest 
country in the world, which thrilled every man 



SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY 337 

with any devil in him. Peter the Painter is a 
hero to this day. 



I had known the quarter for many years 
before it interested me. It was not until I 
was prowling around on a Fleet Street assign- 
ment that I learned to hate it. A murder had 
been committed over a cafe in Lupin Street : 
a popular murder, fruity, cleverly done, and 
with a sex interest. Of course every newspaper 
and agency developed a virtuous anxiety to 
track the culprit, and all resources were 
directed to that end . Journalism is perhaps the 
only profession in which so fine a public spirit 
may be found. So it was that the North 
Country paper of which I was a hanger-on 
flung every available man into the fighting 
line, and the editor told me that I might, in 
place of the casual paragraphs for the London 
Letter, do something good on the Vassiloff 
murder . 

It was a night of cold rain, and the pave- 
ments were dashed with smears of light from 
the shop windows. Through the streaming 
streets my hansom leaped ; and as I looked 
from the window, and noted the despondent 
biliousness of Bethnal Green, I realized that 
the grass withereth, the flower fadeth. 

I dismissed the cab at Brick Lane, and, 
continuing the tradition which had been in- 
stilled into me by my predecessor on the 
London Letter, I turned into one of the hos- 
telries and had a vodka to keep the cold out. 

22 



338 A RUSSIAN NIGHT 

Little Russia was shutting up. The old 
shawled women, who sit at every corner with 
huge baskets of black bread and sweet cakes, 
were departing beneath umbrellas. The stalls 
of Osborn Street, usually dressed with foreign- 
looking confectionery, were also retiring. 
Indeed, everybody seemed to be slinking away, 
and as I sipped my vodka, and felt it burn 
me with raw fire, I cursed news editors and all 
publics which desired to read about murders. 
I was perfectly sure that I shouldn't do the 
least good ; so I had another, and gazed 
through the kaleidoscopic window, rushing with 
rain, at the cheerful world that held me. 

Oh, so sad it is, this quarter ! By day the 
streets are a depression, with their frowzy 
doss-houses and their vapour -baths. Grey 
and sickly is the light. Grey and sickly, 
too, are the leering shops, and grey and 
sickly are the people and the children. 
Everything has followed the grass and the 
flower. Childhood has no place ; so above 
the roofs you may see the surly points of a 
Council School. Such games as happen are 
played but listlessly, and each little face is 
smirched. The gaunt warehouses hardly sup- 
port their lopping heads, and the low, beetling, 
gabled houses of the alleys seem for ever to 
brood on nights of bitter adventure. Fit 
objects for contempt by day they may be, but 
when night creeps upon London, the hideous 
darkness that can almost be touched, then their 
faces become very powers of terror, and the 
cautious soul, wandered from the comfort of 



SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY 339 

the main streets, walks and walks in a frenzy, 
seeking outlet and finding none. Sometimes 
a hoarse laugh will break sharp on his ear. 
Then he runs. 

■Well, I finished my second, and then 
sauntered out. As I was passing a cruel - 
looking passage, a girl stepped forward. She 
looked at me. I looked at her. She had the 
haunting melancholy of Russia in her face, but 
her voice was as the voice of Cockaigne. For 
she spoke and said : — 

" Funny -looking little guy, ain't you?" 

I suppose I was. So I smiled and said: 
" We are as God made us, old girl." 

She giggled. . . . 

I said I felt sure I should do no good on 
the Vassiloff murder. I didn't. For just then 
two of her friends came out of the court, each 
with a boy. It was apparent that she had no 
boy. I had no idea what the occasion might 
be, but the other four marched ahead, crying, 
" Come on ! " And, surprised, yet knowing 
of no good reason for being surprised, I felt 
the girl's arm slip into mine, and we joined 
the main column. . . . 

That is one of London's greatest charms : it 
is always ready to toss you little encounters 
of this sort, if you are out for them. 

Across the road we went, through mire and 
puddle, and down a long, winding court. At 
about midway our friends disappeared, and, 
suddenly drawn to the right, I was pushed 
from behind up a steep, fusty stair. Then I 
knew where we were going. We were going 



340 A RUSSIAN NIGHT 

to the tenements where most of the Russians 
meet of an evening. The atmosphere in these 
places is a little more cheerful than that of the 
cafes — if you can imagine a Russian ever rising 
to cheerfulness. Most of the girls lodge over 
the milliners' shops, and thither their friends 
resort. Every establishment here has a piano, 
for music, with them, is a sombre passion 
rather than a diversion. You will not hear 
comic opera, but if you want to climb the lost 
heights of melody, stand in Bell Yard, and 
listen to a piano, lost in the high glooms, 
wailing the heart of Chopin, or Rubinstein or 
Glazounoff through the fingers of pale, moist 
girls, while the ghost of Peter the Painter 
parades the naphtha'd highways. 

At the top of the stair I was pushed into 
a dark, fusty room, and guided to a low, fusty 
sofa or bed. Then some one struck a match, 
and a lamp was lit and set on the mantelshelf. 
It flung a soft, caressing radiance on its shabby 
home, and on its mistress, and on the other 
girls and boys. The boys were tough 
youngsters of the district, evidently very much 
at home, smoking Russian cigarettes and 
settling themselves on the bed in a manner 
that seemed curiously continental in Cockney 
toughs. I doubt if you would have loved the 
girls at that moment ; and yet . . . you know 
. . . their black or brassy hair, their untidi- 
ness, and the cotton blouses half -dropped from 
their tumultuous breasts . . . 

The girl who had collared me disappeared 
for a moment, and then brought a tray of 



SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY 341 

Russian tea. " Help 'selves, boys ! " We did 
so, and, watching the others, I discovered that 
it was the correct thing to lemon the ladies' 
tea for them and stir it well and light their 
cigarettes. I did so for Katarina— that was 
her name— while she watched me with little 
truant locks of hair running everywhere, and 
a slow, alluring smile that seemed to hold all 
the agony and mystery of the steppes. 

The room, on which the wallpaper hung in 
dank strips, contained a full-sized bed and a 
chair bedstead, a washstand, a samovar, a pot- 
pourri of a carpet, and certain mysteries of 
feminine toilet. A rickety three-legged table 
stood by the window, and Katarina's robes 
hung in a dainty riot of frill and colour behind 
the door, which only shut when you thrust a 
peg of wood through a wired catch. 

One of the boys sprawled himself, in clumsy 
luxury, on the bed, and his girl arranged her- 
self at his side, and when she was settled her 
hair tumbled in a shower of hairpins, and 
everybody laughed like children. The other 
girl went to the piano, and her boy squatted 
on the floor at her feet. 

She began to play. . . . You would not 
understand, I suppose, the intellectual emotion 
of the situation. It is more than curious to 
sit in these rooms, in the filthiest spot in 
London, and listen to Moszkowsky, Tchai- 
kowsky, and Sibelius, played by a factory girl. 
It is . . . something indefinable. I had 
visited similar places in Stepney before, but 
then I had not had a couple of vodkas, and I 



342 A RUSSIAN NIGHT 

had not been taken in tow by an unknown 
girl. They play and play, while tea and 
cigarettes, and sometimes vodka or whisky, go 
round ; and as the room gets warmer, so does 
one's sense of smell get sharper ; so do the 
pale faces get moister ; and so does one long 
more and more for a breath of cold air from 
the Ural Mountains. The best you can do 
is to ascend to the flat roof, and take a deep 
breath of Spitalfields ozone. Then back to 
the room for more tea and more music. 

Sanya played. . . . Despite the unventi- 
lated room, the greasy appointments, and other 
details that would have turned the stomach 
of Kensington, that girl at the piano, her dress 
cunningly disarranged, playing, as no one 
would have dreamed she could play, the finer 
intensities of Wieniawski and Moussorgsky, 
shook all sense of responsibility from me. The 
burdens of life vanished. News editors and 
their assignments be damned. Enjoy your- 
self, was what the cold, insidious music said. 
Take your moments when the fates send them : 
that was life's best lesson. Snatch the joy of 
the fleeting moment . Why ponder on time and 
tears ? 

Devilish little fingers they were, Sanya's. 
Her technique was not perhaps all that it 
might have been ; she might not have 
won the Gold Medal of our white-shirted 
academies, but she had enough temperament 
to make half a dozen Bechstein Hall virtuosi. 
From valse to nocturne, from sonata to pre- 
lude, her fancy ran. With crashing chords 



SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY 343 

she dropped from " L'Automne Bacohanale " 
to the Nocturne in E flat ; scarcely murmured 
of that, then tripped elvishly into Moszkowsky's 
Waltz, and from that she dropped to a song of 
Tchaikowsky, almost heartbreaking in its 
childish beauty, and then to the lecherous 
music of the second act of " Tristan." Mazurka, 
polonaise, and nocturne wailed in the stuffy 
chamber ; her little hands lit up the enchanted 
gloom of the place with bright thrills, until 
the bed and the dingy surroundings faded into 
phantoms and left only two stark souls in 
colloquy : Katarina's and mine. 

Katarina had settled, I forget how, on the 
sofa, and was reclining very comfortably with 
her head on my shoulder and both arms about 
me. We did not talk. No questions passed 
as to why we had picked one another up. 
There we were, warmed with vodka and tea, at 
eleven o'clock at night, five stories above the 
clamorous world, while her friend shook the 
silly souls out of us. With the shy boldness of 
my native country, I stretched a hand and 
inclosed her fingers . She smiled ; a curious 
smile that no other girl in London could have 
given ; not a flushed smile, or a startled smile, or 
a satisfied smile, or a coy smile ; but a smile of 
companionship, which seemed to have realized 
the tragedy of our living. So it was that she 
had, by slow stages, reached her comfortable 
position, for as my hand wandered from finger 
to wrist, from wrist to soft, rounded arm, and 
so inclosed her neck, she slipped and buried 
me in an avalanche of flaming, scented tresses. 



344 A RUSSIAN NTGHT 

Sanya at the piano shot a glance over her 
shoulder, a very sad-gay glance ; she laughed, 
curiously, I almost said foreignly. I felt some- 
how as though I had been taken complete 
possession of by these people. I hardly be- 
longed to myself. Fleet Street was but a street 
of dream. I seemed now to be awake and 
in an adorable captivity. 

With a final volley of chords, the pianist 
slid from the chair, and sat by her boy on 
the carpet, smoothing his face with tobacco- 
stained fingers, and languishing, while her 
thick, over-ripe lips took his kisses as a baby 
bird takes food from its mother. 

We talked — all of us — in jerks and snatches. 
Then the oil in the lamp began to give out, 
and the room grew dim. Some one said : 
" Play something ! " And some one said : 
" Too tired ! " The girl reclining on the bed 
grew snappy. She did not lean for caresses. 
She seemed morose, preoccupied, almost im- 
patient. Twice she snapped up her boy on a 
casual remark. I believe I talked vodka'd 
nonsense. . . . 

But suddenly there came a whisper of soft 
feet on the landing, and a secret tap at the 
door. Some one opened it, and slipped out. One 
heard the lazy hum of voices in busy conversa- 
tion. Then silence ; and some one entered 
the room and shut the door. One of the boys 
asked, casually, "What's up?" His question 
was not answered, but the girl who had gone 
to the door snapped something in a sharp tone 
which might have been either Russian or 



SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY 345 

Yiddish. Katarina loosened herself from me, 
and sat up. The girl on the bed sat up. 
The three of them spat angry phrases about, 
I called over to one of the boys : " What's 
the joke? Anything wrong?" and received a 
reply: " Owshdiknow ? I ain't a ruddy 
Russian, am I ? " 

Katarina suddenly drew back her flaming 
face. " Here," she said, " you better go." 

"Go?" 

" Yes — fathead ! Go's what I said." 

" But " I began, looking and feeling like 

a flabbergasted cat. 

" Don't I speak plain? Go ! " 

I suppose a man never feels a finer idiot 
than when a woman tells him she doesn't want 
him. If he ever does, it is when a woman 
tells him that she loves him. Katarina had 
given me the bullet, and, of course, I felt 
a fool ; but I derived some consolation from 
the fact that the other boys were being told 
off. Clearly, big things were in the air, about 
to happen. Something, evidently, had already 
happened. I wondered. . . . Then I sat 
down on the sofa, and flatly told Katarina 
that I was not going unless I had a reason. 

" Oh," she said, blithely, " ain't you? This 
is my room, ain't it? I brought you here, and 
you stay here just as long as I choose, and no 
longer. Who d'you think you are, saying you 
won't go? This is my room. I let you come 
here for a drink, and you just got to go when 
I say. See? " 

I was about to make a second stand, when 



346 A RUSSIAN NIGHT 

again there came a stealthy tap at the door, 
again the whispering of slippered feet. Sanya 
glided to the door, opened it, and disappeared. 
In a moment she came back, and called, 
" 'Rina ! " Katarina slipped from my embrace, 
went to the door, and disappeared too. One 
girl and three boys remained — in silence. 

Next moment Katarina reappeared, and said 
something to Sanya. Sanya pulled her boy 
by fhe arm, and went out. The other girl 
pushed her boy at the neck and literally threw 
him out . Katarina came over to me, and said : 
" Go, little fool ! " 

I said : " Shan't unless I know what the 
game is." 

She stood over me ; glared ; searched for 
words to meet the occasion ; found none. She 
gestured. I sat as rigid as an immobile 
comedian. Finally, she flung her arms, and 
swept away. At the door she turned : 
" Blasted little fool ! He'll do us both in if 
y'ain't careful. You don't know him. Both 
of us he'll have. Serveyeh right." 

She disappeared. I was alone. I heard 
the sup-sup of her slippered feet down the 
stair. 

I got up, and moved to the door. I heard 
nothing. I stood by the window, my thoughts 
dancing a ragtime. I wondered what to do,, 
and how, and whether. I wondered what was 
up exactly. I wondered . . . well, I just 
wondered. My thoughts got into a tangle, 
sank, and swam, and sank again. Then there 
was a sudden struggle and spurt from the lamp, 



SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY 347 

and it went black out. From a room across 
the landing a clock ticked menacingly. I saw, 
by the thin light from the window, the smoke 
of a discarded cigarette curling up and up to 
the ceiling like a snake. 

I went again to the door, peered down the 
steep stair and over the crazy balustrade. 
Nobody was about ; no voices . I slipped 
swiftly down the five nights, met nobody. I 
stood in the slobbered vestibule. From afar 
I heard the sluck of the waters against the 
staples of the wharves, and the wicked hoot 
of the tugs. 

It was then that a sudden nameless fear 
seized me ; it was that simple terror that comes 
from nothing but ourselves. I am not usually 
afraid of any man or thing. I am normally 
nervous, and there are three or four things 
that have power to terrify me. But I am not, 
I think, afraid. At that moment, however, 
I was afraid of everything : of the room I 
had left, of the house, of the people, of the 
inviting lights of the warehouses: and the 
threatening shoals of the alleys. 

I stood a moment longer. Then I raced 
into Brick Lane, and out into the brilliance 
of Commercial Street . 



A DOWN-STREAM NIGHT 
BLACKWALL 



WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD 

Black man — white man — browti man — yellow man — 

All the lousy Orient loafing on the quay: 
Hindoo, Dago, Jap, Malay, and Chinaman 

Dipping into London from the great green sea / 

Black man — white ?nan — brown man — yellow man — 
Penny fields and Poplar and Chinatown for me I 

Stately-moving cut-throats and many-coloured mysteries, 
Never were such lusty things for London lads to see ! 

On the evil twilight — rose and star and silver — 
Steals a song that long ago in Singapore they sang: 

Fragrant of spices, of incense and opium, 

Cinnamon and aconite, the betel and the bhang. 

Three miles straight lies lily-clad Belgravia, 

Thin-lipped ladies and padded men and pale. 
But here are turbaned princes and velvet-glancing gentlemen, 

Tom-tom and sharp knife and salt-caked sail. 

Then get you down to Limehouse, by rigging, wharf, and 
smoke-stack, 
Glamour, dirt, and perfmne, and dusky men and gold; 
For down in lurking Limehouse there's the blue moon of the 
Orient — 
Lamps for young Aladdins, and bowies for the bold! 



A DOWN-STREAM NIGHT 

BLACKWALL 

Tide was at flood, and below Limehouse Hole 
the waters thrashed the wharves with malice. 
The hour was late, but life ran high in those 
parts. Against the savage purple of the night 
a few wisps of rigging and some gruff funnels 
stood up in East and West India Docks. 

Sheer above the walls of East India Dock 
rose the deck of the CaWdor Castle, as splen- 
didly correct as a cathedral. The leaping lines 
of her seemed lost in the high skies, and she 
stood out sharply, almost ecstatically. Against 
such superb forces of man, the forces of 
Nature seemed dwarfed. It was a lyric in 
steel and iron. Men hurried from the landing- 
stage, up the plank, vanishing into the sly 
glooms of the huge port -holes. Chains rang 
and rattled. Lascars of every kind flashed 
here and there : Arabs, Chinkies, Japs, Malays, 
East Indians. Talk in every lingo was on 
the air. Some hurried from the dock, making 
for a lodging-house or for The Asiatics' Home. 
Some hurried into the dock, with that impassive 
swiftness which gives no impression of haste, 

but rather carries a touch of extreme languor. 

351 



352 A DOWN-STREAM NIGHT 

An old cargo tramp lay in a far berth, and one 
caught the sound of rushing blocks, and a 
monotonous voice wailing the Malayan chanty : 
" Love is kind to the least of men, EEEE-tf/z, 
EEEE-aA ! " Boats were loading up. Others 
were unloading. Over all was the glare of 
arc-lights, and the flutter of honeyed tongues. 
A few tugs were moored at the landing- 
stages. One or two men hung about them, 
smoking, spitting. The anger of the Blackwall 
streets came to them in throbbing blasts, for 
it was Saturday night, and closing time. Over 
the great plain of London went up a great 
cry. Outside the doors of every hostelry, in 
Piccadilly and Bermondsey, in Blackwall and 
Oxford Street, were gathered bundles of 
hilarity, lingering near the scenes of their recent 
splendours like banished, princes. A thousand 
sounds, now of revelry, now of complaint, dis- 
turbed the brooding calm of the sky. A 
thousand impromptu concerts were given, and 
a thousand insults grew precociously to blows. 
A thousand old friendships were shattered, and 
a thousand new vows of eternal comradeship 
and blood-brotherhood were registered. A 
thousand wives were waiting, sullen and heavy - 
eyed, for a thousand jovial or brutal mates ; 
and a thousand beds received their occupants 
in full harness, booted and hatted, as though 
the enemy were at the gates. Everywhere 
strains of liquor-music surged up and up for 
the next thirty minutes, finally to die away 
piecemeal as different roads received different 
revellers . 



BLACKWALL 353 

In the hot, bilious dark of B'lackwall, the 
tug swayed and jerked, and the voices of the 
men seemed almost to shatter the night. But 
high above them was the dirty main street, and 
there " The Galloping Horses " flared and 
fluttered and roared. There seemed to be 
trouble. . . . One heard a querulous voice : 
" I said Time, din' I ? " And another : " Well, 
let 'im prove it. Let 'im 'it me, that's all ! " 
From the tug you could see the dust of the 
street rise in answering clouds to the assaults 
of many feet. Then, quite suddenly, the wide 
swing-doors of the bar flapped back. A golden 
gleam burst on the night and seemed to vomit 
a slithering mass of men which writhed and 
rolled like an octopus. Then you heard the 
collapsible gates run to their sockets with a 
glad clang, and the gas was switched off. 

The fester of noise widened and widened, 
and at last burst into twenty minute pieces. 
And now a large voice commanded the silence 
of the night, and cried upon London : " What 
I said is what I say now : that fan-tan is fan- 
tan. And blasted miracles is blasted miracles." 

I stood on the tug, with some of the boys, 
and in silence we watched the drama that was 
about to unfold itself. I had tramped there, 
unthinkingly, up the thunderous length of 
Rotherhithe Tunnel and down East India Dock 
Road, and had fallen in with Chuck Lightfoot 
and some of his waterside cronies. We were 
lounging on the tug, so far as I remember, 
because we were lounging on the tug. For no 
other reason . 

23 



354 A DOWN-STREAM NIGHT 

After the outcry of the Great Voice, there 
was a short silence. It was broken by a 
woman, who cried : " Ar-ferr ! " 
' You go on 'ome ! " cried Arfer. 

The woman replied that bad-word husbands 
who stayed out so bad-wordily late ought to 
be bad-wordily bad-worded. The next moment 
Arfer had gone down to a blow from the Great 
Voice . 

Things began to happen. There was a loud 
scratch as a hundred feet scuttered backward. 
The victim sprang up. For a moment astonish- 
ment seemed to hold him, as he bleared ; then 
he seemed about to burst with wrath ; then 
he became a cold sportsman. The lady 
screamed for aid. He spat on his hands. He 
hitched his trousers. Hands down, chin pro- 
truded, he advanced on his opponent with the 
slow, insidious movement of the street fighter. 
The other man dashed in, beat him off with 
the left, and followed it with three to the face 
with the right. He pressed his man. He 
ducked a lumbering right swing, and sent a 
one-two to the body. The lady had lashed 
herself to a whirlwind of profanity. She spat 
words at the crowd; and oaths fell like toads 
from her lips. We below heard the crowd and 
the lady ; but we saw only the principals of 
the combat until . . . until the lady, disre- 
garding the ethics of the game, flew in with 
screwed face, caught the coming arm of the 
big man, and pinioned it beneath her own. 

" 'Elp, 'elp, some of yeh ! " she cried. Her 
husband fastened on to his enemy, tore at his 



BLACKWALL 355 

collar with wild ringers, opened his mouth, and 
tried to bite. The big man struggled with 
both. The bulky form of the lady was swung 
back and forth by his cunning arm ; and one 
heard the crowd stand by, press in, rush back, 
in rhythm to the movements of the battlers. 
A moment later the lady was down and out. 
A sudden blow at the breast from the great 
elbow . I heard her fall ... I heard the gasp 
of the crowd. 

Here and there the blank street was suddenly 
struck to life. Warm blinds began to wink. 
One heard the creak of opening windows, and 
voices : " Why doncher separate 'em ? Why 
cancher shut that plurry row ? " With the new 
light one saw the crowd against a ground of 
chocolate hue. Here and there a cigarette 
picked out a face, glowing like an evil eye. 
All else was dank darkness. 

Round and round the combatants went. Two 
well-set youngsters made a dash upon them, 
only to be swung from their feet into the crowd . 
They kicked, twisted, jerked, panted, now 
staggered a few paces, now stood still, strain- 
ing silently. Now they were down, now up. 
Another woman's voice wailed across the 
unhappy water in the mournful accent of 
Belfast : " Fr-r-rank, Fr-rank, where arrre 
ye? Oh, Fr-rank, Fr-rank — ye br-reak me 
hear-r-t ! " 

Then Chuck Lightfoot, known also as The 
Panther, The Croucher, and The Prize Packet, 
shifted from my side. I looked at him. " Fed 
up on this, I am. Wait here." He vaulted 



356 A DOWN-STREAM NIGHT 

from the deck of the tug to the landing-stage, 
strode up the gang-plank, and was lost in the 
long shaft of darkness . 

From above one heard a noise — a nasty 
noise : the sound of a man's head being banged 
on the pavement. Frank's wife screamed : 
" Separate 'em ! He's killin' 'im ! Why don't 
some one do somethin' ? " 

Another woman cried : " I'll be sick. Stop 
'em. I daresn't look." 

Then everything stopped. We heard a low 
hum, swelling swiftly to a definite cry. 
The word " dead — dead — dead " flitted from 
mouth to mouth. Some turned away. Others 
approached as near as they dared, retreating 
fearfully when a push from behind drove them 
forward. . . . 

But nobody was dead. Into the centre light 
had dashed Chuck Lightfoot. Chuck Light- 
foot was a pugilistic manager. He was a lot 
of other things besides. He was the straightest 
boy I have ever met in that line. He had every 
high animal quality that a man should have. 
And he had a cold nerve that made men twice 
his size afraid of him. 

The fight was stopped. Two blows from 
Chuck had stopped it. The crowd gathered 
round and gave first aid to both combatants, 
while Chuck faced them, and waited for 
assaults. We climbed up and stood with him, 
but nothing happened. Tragedy is so often 
imminent in this region, and so often trickles 
away to rubbish. The crowd was vociferous 
and gestic. It swooped about us, and in- 



BLACKWALL 357 

quired, conjectured, disapproved, condemned. 
Then came a distraction. Something with hair 
like an autumn sunset came to the mouth of a 
passage, and stood, wondering. A little white 
frock fluttered in the dusk like a great moth. 
In that crowd it was Innocence ; and as there 
is something damnably provocative about Inno- 
cence, I was not surprised when some one 
moved from the crowd and went towards it. 
I prodded Chuck, and we slipped away. We 
followed that some one. Chuck dodged ahead 
to come in with a flanking movement. The 
crowd let us go without comment or inter- 
ference . 

I knew the region well, and I threaded my 
way through the mazes of arches and lanes, 
littered with coal dust and decaying matter. 
Ahead of me, like a will o' the wisp, fluttered 
the white frock, and with it the some one 
with shuffling step, turned-up collar, a face 
slippery and ferret -like, and hands deep in 
pockets . 

Then it vanished. It vanished through the 
open door of an empty house, under an unlit 
archway. I stood still. The house showed 
black and menacing. A late train rumbled 
slowly over one of the arches, a train carry- 
ing a load of woes that creaked and rattled 
and groaned and set the arch trembling. I 
tip-toed into the doorway, and listened. Some- 
thing came sweeping down the stairs and along 
the arches. I was in the bluest funk of my 
life. It was only the wind. 

At that moment Chuck came up ; and 



358 A DOWN-STREAM NIGHT 

together we slid up the crazy stairs. Two 
rooms on the first landing were empty. The 
mouldy door of the single room on the top 
landing was open. We struck matches, and 
found our man. . . . From the far-away dock 
came the noise of a rushing chain, and a deep, 
resonant voice giving the chanty : " What shall 
we do with a drunken sailor ? " 

In the thin light I saw his face crack to a 
smile. Then the match burnt Chuck's fingers, 
and he dropped it. Darkness. It is doubtful 
if there is anything more exhilarating to all 
the faculties than a fight in a dark, cramped 
space. I stood at the door to prevent escape. 
I heard slow, soft movements. T heard the 
jingle of a belt. I heard a whiz, and then 
a mild thud. Then I heard the hard smack of 
a fist on a face, and a strangled cry from the 
man. There were quick stamps, as one or 
other feinted a rush, and then changed 
position . 

In the ordinary way, I am not a warrior, 
but I am an Irishman. You understand? I 
like danger which I invent for myself, but I 
hate being pushed into danger on other people's 
orders ; and I very much hate being hurt 
anyway. Courage is a jewel of many facets, 
too. There are three absurd things of which I 
am horribly afraid ; I would run a mile to 
avoid them. There are other things of which 
I am also afraid, though I never allow myself 
to be. I once knew a man who would tremble 
with fright if he had to fight a man who had 
drawn a knife. Yet on a sinking ship he 



BLACKWALL 359 

showed the coldest nerve, and got women and 
children off in the last boat as casually as 
though he were assisting them from a cab. I 
knew another man who commanded a hundred 
native West African police, in a village fifty 
miles from the coast. He slept with revolvers 
under his pillow, and was certain of attack if 
he appeared without them. Yet he ran like 
a woman before a runaway horse in the Strand. 
Likewise, I should detest warfare under modern 
conditions. Being shot at from a distance of 
five miles must be very disconcerting. I have 
not enjoyed being under fire even at a range 
of five feet, in a small, top room, three yards 
long by four wide. 

It came suddenly, before I had time to run 
away. Chuck snapped a command — 

" Strike a light, boy ! " I did so. Then 
I saw Chuck's arm shoot forward, and grab 
the arm of the man, and jerk it backward. 
In the hand something gleamed. There was 
a detonation, and something kissed my ear, 
and whined its way into outer darkness. I 
struck more matches, and more, for the fight 
was now Chuck's. He had fixed a hold that 
was bound to settle matters. Just by the 
elbows he had him, and slowly put out all 
his sly strength, crushing him against his hard, 
flat chest. Slowly the wretch's shoulders were 
squeezed round, and slowly and painfully his 
chest was narrowed till the breath came in 
gasps . 

" Eugh-eugh-eugh ! " and feeble struggles. 
But it was useless. The small bones cricked 



360 A DOWN-STREAM NIGHT 

as Chuck's grasp tightened, and at last he 
dropped limply to the floor. 

Chuck looked at him casually. ' That'll 
learn yeh, me old son ! " was all he said. We 
struck more matches, and turned to go . Chuck 
was wiping his nose on his sleeve, when the 
creature struggled to his feet. I was holding 
the match to light my old pal down the stairs. 
I was young in those days, you know, and I 
knew very little about anything except things 
I ought not to know. 

The man said : " Look here, mate, d'you 
think I meant any 'arm? I take me oath I 
didn't. I take me dying oath I wasn't going 
to do nothing ! " 

I was standing at the top of the stairs. I 
was very young. So I lifted up my voice, and 
called him a liar. ... I still walk with a 
slight limp, if you notice. 



AN ART NIGHT 
CHELSEA 



A LONDON MOMENT 

Often have L, in my desolate years, 

Flogged a jaded heart in loud saloons ; 

Often have J fled myself with tears, 

Wandering under pallid, passionate moons. 

Often have I slunk through pleasured rites, 

Lonely in the tumult of decay j 
Often marked the hectic London nights 

Flowing from the violet-lidded day. 

Yet, because of you, the world has been 

Kindlier. Oh, little heart- o' -rose, 
I have glimpsed a beauty seldom seen 

Ln this labyrinthine mist of woes ! 

Beauty smiles at me from common things, 
All the way from Fleet Street to the Strand , 

Even in the song the barmaid sings 
L have found a fresh enchanted land. 

Pass me by, you little vagrant joy. 

Brush me from your delicate mimic world. 
Nothing of you now can e'er annoy, 

Since your beauty has my heart empearled. 

Pass me by; and only let me say : 
Glad I am for pain of loving you, 

Glad— for, in the tumult of decay, 
LJfe is nobler than L ever knew. 



AN ART NIGHT 

CHELSEA 

' The choicest bit of London ! " That is 
William Dean Howells' impression of Chelsea. 
And, if you would perceive rightly the soul 
of Chelsea, you must view it through the pearl - 
grey haze of just such a temperament as that 
of the suave American novelist. If you have 
not that temperament, then Chelsea is not for 
you ; try Hampstead or Streatham or Bays- 
water. Of all suburbs it is the most subtle. 
It has more soul in one short street than you 
will find in the whole mass of Oxford Street 
and Piccadilly. There is something curiously 
feminine and intoxicating in the quality of its 
charm : something that evokes the silver- 
pensive mood. One visions it as a graceful 
spinster— watered silks, ruffles, corkscrew curls, 
you know, with lily fingers caressing the keys 
of her harpsichord. Pass down Cheyne Walk 
at whatever time you will, and you are never 
alone ; little companies of delicate fancy join 
you at every step. The gasworks may gloom 
at you from the far side. The L.C.C. cars 

may hum and clang. But fancy sweeps them 

363 



364 AN ART NIGHT 

away. It is like sitting amid the barbarities 
of a Hyde Park drawing-room, in the emerald 
dusk, listening to the pathetic wheezing of a 
musical-box, ridiculously sweet :— 



Oh, don't you remember the days when we roamed, 
Sweet Phyllis, by lane and by lea ? 



Whatever you want in Chelsea— that you will 
find, assuming, of course, the possession of 
the Chelsea temperament. Whistler discovered 
her silvern beauty when he first saw her reclin- 
ing by the river, beautifying that which beauti- 
fies her. All about Chelsea the colours seem 
to chime with their backgrounds as though 
they loved them ; and when the lamps are 
lighted, flinging soft shadows on sixteenth 
and seventeenth -century gables and doorways 
and passages, then she becomes a place of 
wonder, a Bagdad, a treasure -ground for the 
artist. 

And the artists have discovered her. Chelsea 
has much to show. Hampstead, Kensington, 
Mayf air— these be rich in gilt -trapping names, 
but no part of England can produce such a 
shining array of names, whose greatness owes 
nothing to time, place, or social circumstance : 
the names of those whose greatness is of the 
soul, and who have shaken the world with the 
beauty they have revealed to us. But Art has 
now taken possession of her, and it is as the 
studio of the artist that Chelsea is known 
to-day. Step this way, if you please. We 



CHELSEA 365 

draw the curtain. Vie de Boheme! But not, 
mark you, the vie de Boheme of Murger . True, 
Rodolphe and Marcel are here, and Mimi and 
Musette. But the studio is not the squalid 
garret that we know. We have changed all 
that. Rodolphe writes light verse for the 
"largest circulations." Mimi draws fashion 
plates, and dresses like the Duchess of the 
novelettes. Marcel — well, Marcel of Chelsea 
may be poor, but his is only a relative poverty. 
He is poor in so far as he dines for two shil- 
lings instead of five. The Marcel of to-day 
who is accustomed to skipping a meal by stress 
of circumstances doesn't live in Chelsea. He 
simply couldn't do it; look at the rents. He 
lives in Walworth Road or Kentish Town. No ; 
there is a vie de Boheme at Chelsea, but it 
is a Bohemia of coffee liqueurs and Turkish 
cigarettes. 

The beginnings of the delectable suburb are 
obscure. It seems to have assumed importance 
on the day when Henry VIII " acquired " its 
manor, which led to the building of numerous 
sycophantic houses. The Duchess of Mon- 
mouth had a residence here, with the delight- 
ful John Gay as secretary. Can one imagine 
a modern Duchess with a modern poet as 
secretary ? The same house was later occupied 
by the gouty dyspeptic, Smollett, who wrote 
all his books at the top of his bad temper. 
Then came— but one could fill an entire volume 
with nothing but a list of the goodly fellowship 
of Chelsea. 

The book about Chelsea has yet to be 



366 AN ART NIGHT 

written. Such a book should disclose to us 
the soul of the place, with its eternal youth 
and eternal antiquity. It should introduce us 
to its charming ghosts— it is difficult to name 
one disagreeable person in this pageant ; even 
the cantankerous Smollett was soothed when he 
came under its spell. It should enable us 
to touch finger-tips, perhaps make closer 
acquaintance, with Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, 
Hans Holbein, Thomas Shadwell (forgotten 
laureate), Carlyle, Whistler, Edwin Abbey, 
George Meredith, Swinburne, Holman Hunt, 
William Morris, Ford Madox Brown, Oscar 
and Willie Wilde, Count d'Orsay, George Eliot, 
and a host of lesser but equally adorable per- 
sonalities whose names must come " among 
those present." It should show us its famous 
places. " It should afford us peep-holes into 
the studios of famous artists— Augustus John's 
studio must be a joy ; it should take us round 
a " Show Sunday " ; it should reconstruct the 
naive gaieties of Cremorne ; and, finally, it 
should re-create and illumine all the large, for- 
gotten moments in the lives of those apostles 
of beauty whose ruminations and dreams the 
soul of Chelsea has fused with more of herself 
than men may know ; ending, perhaps, with 
a disquisition on the effects of environment 
on the labours of genius. 

Such a book must be done by a stranger, 
an observer, one with a gracious pen, a deli- 
cate, entirely human mind. There is one man 
above all who is divinely appointed for the 
task. 



CHELSEA 367 

Please, Mr. W. D. Howells, will you write 
it for us? 



I was strolling in philosophic mood down 
the never-ending King's Road, one November 
night, debating whether I should drop in at 
the Chelsea Palace, or have just one more 
at the " Salisbury," when I ran into the R.B.A. 
He is a large man, and running into him rather 
upsets one's train of thought. When I had 
smoothed my nose and dusted my trousers, I 
said : " Well, what about it ? " He said : 
"Well, what about it?" 

So we turned into the " Six Bells," the even- 
ing haunt of every good artist. He said he 
hadn't much money, so what about it? We 
decided on a Guinness to begin with, and then 
he ordered some Welsh Rarebits, while I 
inspected the walls of the saloon, which are 
decorated with nothing but originals, many of 
them bearing resounding names. In the 
billiard-room he introduced me to Augustus 
John and three other famous men who might 
not like it known that they drink beer in 
public -houses. When the Welsh Rarebits were 
announced, we went upstairs to the cosy 
dining-room and feasted gorgeously, watching, 
from the window, the many -coloured life of 
Chelsea. . . . 

When every scrap of food on our plates 
was gone, we had another Guinness, and I 
went back to his studio, a beautiful room with 
oak panelling and electric light, which he 



368 AN ART NIGHT 

rented from a travelling pal for the ridiculous 
sum of three shillings a week. It stood next 
to the reconstructed Crosby Hall, and looked 
out on a wide prospect of sloping roofs, 
peppered with sharp light. 

He sat down and showed me his day's work . 
He showed me etchings, oils, pastels. He told 
me stories. He showed me caricatures of the 
famous people with whom he had bohemed. 
Then, at about ten o'clock, he said it was rather 
dull ; and what about it ? He knew a place, 
quite near, where some of the boys were sure 
to be ; what about it ? 

So we descended the lone staircase, and 
came out to the windy embankment, where 
self-important little tugs were raking the water 
with the beams of their headlights. Thence we 
made many turnings, and stopped at a house 
near the Models' Club. At this club, which 
was formed only in 1 9 1 3, the artists may go 
at any time to secure a model — which is a 
distinct boon. The old way was for the model 
to call on the artist, the result being that the 
unfortunate man was pestered with dozens of 
girls for whom he had no use, while the one 
model he really wanted never appeared. The 
club combines the advantages of club, employ- 
ment bureau, and hotel. There is no smoking- 
room ; every room is a smoking-room, for 
there are two things which are essential to 
the comfort of the girl -model, and they are 
cigarettes and sweets. These are their 
only indulgences, for, obviously, if you are 
depending for your livelihood on your personal 



CHELSEA 369 

figure, self-denial and an abstemious life are 
compulsory . 

If you want to know what is doing in the 
art world, who is painting what, and why, then 
get yourself invited to tea — China tea only. 
The gathering is picturesque, for the model 
has, of course, the knack of the effective pose, 
not only professionally but socially. It is a 
beautiful club, and it is one more answer to 
the eternal question Why Girls Don't Marry. 
With a Models' Club, the Four Arts Club, 
the Mary Curzon Hotel, and the Lyceum Club, 
why on earth should they? 

The R.B.A. pulled up short and said there 
we were, and what about it ? We knocked at 
the door, and were admitted by an anarchist. 
At least, I think he was an anarchist, because 
he was just like the pictures. I have only 
met eighteen real anarchists, two of whom had 
thrown a bomb ; but I could never really 
believe in them ; they wore morning-coats and 
bowler hats and were clean-shaven. 

"Where are they? " asked the R.B.A. 

" They're awa' oopstairs, laddie," said the 
anarchist. " Taak heed ye dinna stoomble ; 
the carrrpet's a wee bit loose." 

We crossed the tiny hall and ascended the 
shabby stairs. From an open door trickled 
the tones of a cheap piano and the mellow, 
philosophic chant of the 'cello. They were 
playing Elgar's " Salut d' Amour." The room 
was dark save for one candle at the piano and 
the dancing firelight. In the dusk it looked 
just like Balestieri's picture of " Beethoven " 

24 



370 AN ART NIGHT 

which adorns every suburban drawing-room 
with a leaning towards the Artistic. People 
were sprawled here and there, but to distin- 
guish them was impossible. I fell over some 
one's foot, and a light treble gurgled at me, 
" Sorry, old boy ! " I caught a whisk of curls 
as the thin gleam of the candle fell that way. 
The R.B.A. crossed the room as one who was 
familiar with its topography, and settled himself 
in a far chair. The anarchist took my arm, 
and said : — 

" Do ye sit down whurr ye can, laddie. And 
ye'll ha' a drink? " 

I fell over some more feet and collapsed 
on a low settee. I found myself by the side of 
a lady in solemn crimson . Her raven hair 
was hanging down her back. Her arms were 
bare. She smoked a Virginia cigarette vindic- 
tively. Sometimes she leaned forward, ad- 
dressed the piano, and said : " Shut that row, 
Mollie, can't you. We want to talk." 

The anarchist brought me a Scotch-and- 
soda, and then she became aware of my 
presence. She looked at me ; she looked at 
the drink. She said to the anarchist : 
"Where's mine?" He said: " WTiat is it?" 
" Cremdermont ! " she snapped. 

She flung a pallid, sullen arm on my 
shoulder and jerked me back against the 
cushions. It was heavy, so I moved it, and 
she told me not to be catty, and asked what 
Baby, meaning the R.B.A., was doing now. 
I said I thought it was book-illustration, and 
she said : " Oh, hell, that's no good ! " 



CHELSEA 371 

Out of the smoky gloom's of the room came 
light laughter and merry voices. One saw 
dimly, as in a dream, graceful forms reclining 
gracefully, attended by carelessly dressed but 
distinguished young men. Some of these 
raised their voices, and one heard the self- 
proud accent of Oxford. The music stopped, 
and the girls sprawled themselves more and 
more negligently, nestling to the rough coats 
of the boys. The haze of smoke thickened. 
I prepared for a boring evening. 

One of the Oxford boys said he knew an 
awfully good story, but it was rather risky, 
you know. I pricked up my ears. Did we 
know the story — story about a fellah — fellah 
.who had an aunt, you know? And fellah's 
aunt was most frightfully keen on dogs and all 
that, you know. . . . After three minutes of 
it I lost interest in the story. It concerned 
Old George and Herbert and young Helen, 
and various other people who seemed familiar 
to everybody but myself. 

I never heard the finish of it. I became 
rather interested in a scene near the window, 
where a boy of about my own age was furiously 
kissing a girl somewhat younger. Then the 
lady at my side stretched her doughy arm 
again, and languished, and making the best 
of a bad job, I languished, too. When the 
funny story and the fellah's aunt had been dis- 
posed of, some one else went to the piano and 
played Debussy, and the anarchist brought me 
another drink ; and the whole thing was such 
painfully manufactured Bohemianism that it 



372 AN ART NIGHT 

made toe a little tired. The room, the appoint- 
ments, the absence of light, Debussy, the 
drinks, and the girls' costumes were so 
obviously part of an elaborate make-up, an 
arrangement of life. The only spontaneous 
note was that which was being struck near the 
window. I decided to slip away, and was 
moving to the door, when the lady caught my 
hand. 

She glared at me, and snapped : " Kiss 
me!" 

More Bohemianism. I felt idiotic. I looked 
idiotic. But I kissed her and fell down the 
ragged stairs into Chelsea, and looked upon 
the shadow -fretted streets, where the arc- 
lamps, falling through the trees, dappled the 
pavements with light. 

The skies were dashed with stars and a sick 
moon. It was trying to snow. I tripped down 
the steps from the door, and ran lightly into 
a girl who stood at the gate, looking up at 
the room I had just left. The cheek that 
was turned toward me was clumsily daubed 
with carmine and rouge. Snowflakes fell 
dejectedly about her narrow shoulders. She 
just glanced at me, and then back at the 
window. I looked up, too. The piano was 
at it again, and some one was singing. The 
thread of light just showed you the crimson 
curtains and the heavy oak beams . The pianist 
dashed into " Mon cceur s'eleve . . ." and the 
voice swam after it. It was a clear, warm 
voice, typical of the fifth-rate concert platform. 
But the girl, her face uplifted, dropped her 



CHELSEA 373 

lips in a half -whispered exclamation of wonder. 
" Guh ! " I should have said that she was, for 
the first time, touching finger-tips with beauty. 
It moved her as something comic should have 
done. Her face lit to a smile, and then a 
chuckle of delight ran from her. 

The voice was doing its best. It sank to 
despair, it leaped to lyric passion, it caressed 
a low note of ecstatic pain, and then, like a 
dew -delighted bird, it fled up and hovered on 
a timid note .of appeal. The girl giggled. 
As the voice died on a long, soft note, she 
laughed aloud, and swallowed. She looked 
around and caught my eye. It seemed that 
she had something about which she must talk. 

. . . "Not bad, eh?" she said. 

"No," I answered. "Not so dusty." 

" Makes you feel . . . kind of rummy, you 
know, don't it ? Wonder what it feels like 
to sing like that, eh? Makes me . . . sort 
of . . . 'fyou understand . . . funny like. 
Makes me want to . . ." 

I looked at her as the lamplight fell about 
her, and the snow swathed her in a kaleido- 
scopic veil. I looked at her lips and her cheek 
and her eyes which gleamed with cheap paint, 
and at the perky feather that seemed to be 
wilting under the damp. It seemed that 
London was always giving me adventures ; this 
looked like being another. I was just think- 
ing of something by which I could continue 
the conversation, while proceeding down the 
street, when the music began again, and she 
lifted her face as though to be filled. Her 



374 AN ART NIGHT 

little soul seemed to be, like a lost bird, beat- 
ing at that silly window. I told her I was 
going that way, but she didn't hear. I waited 
until the song was done, and then said it again. 
But her face was downcast and quiet. She 
hardly looked at me. She said : ' I'm going 
home," and, with a last look at the window, 
and with slow, painful steps she crawled 
miserably away. 

From the window came one of the Oxford 
voices. " No earthly, dear old girl. You'll 
never sing. Your values, you know, and all 
that are . . ." 



A SUNDAY NIGHT 
ANYWHERE 



SUNDAY TEA-TIME 

There is a noise of winkles on the air, 
Muffins and winkles rattle down the road, 
The sluggish road, whose hundred houses stare 
One on another in after-dinner gloom. 
" Peace, perfect Peace ! " wails an accordion, 
" Ginger, you're barmy ! •"' snarls a gramophone. 

A most unhappy place, this leafless Grove 
In the near suburbs ; not a place for tears 

Nor for light laughter, for all life is chilled 
With the unpurposed toil of many years. 

But once — ah, once! — the accordions wheezy strains 

Led tny poor heart to April-smelling lanes. 



A SUNDAY NIGHT 

ANYWHERE 

There is something almost freakish in the 
thoughtful calm of the London Sunday. 
During the night the town seems to have 
cleaned and preened itself, an'.d the creamy, 
shadow -fretted streets of the Sabbath belong 
more to some Southern region than to Battersea 
or Barnsbury. The very houses have a de- 
tached, folded manner, like volumes of abstruse 
theological tracts. From every church tower 
sparks of sound leap out on the expectant air, 
mingling and clashing with a thousand others ; 
and the purple spires fling themselves to 
heaven with the joy of a perfect thought. In 
the streets there is an atmosphere of best 
clothes and best manners. There is a flutter 
of bright frocks. Father, in his black coat 
and silk hat, walks seriously, as befits one 
with responsibilities, what time mother at home 
is preparing the feast. The children, poor 
darlings, do not skip or jump or laugh. They 
walk sedately, in their starchy attire, holding 
father's arm and trying to realize that it really 
is Sunday, and therefore very sinful to fling 



378 A SUNDAY NIGHT 

oneself about. The people taking their appe- 
tite stroll before midday dinner look all so sleek 
and complacent that one would like to borrow 
money from them. The 'buses rumble with 
a cheeriness that belongs not to weekdays ; 
their handrails gleam with a new brightness, 
and the High Street, with shops shuttered and 
barred, bears not the faintest resemblance to 
the High Street you know so well, even as 
policemen, with helmets and tunics, look sur- 
prisingly unlike human beings. The water- 
carts seem to work with cleaner, lighter water, 
and as the sun catches the sprayed stream it 
whips it into a thousand drops of white fire. 
It is Sunday. The roads are blazing white 
ribbons under the noon sun. A stillness broods 
over all, a stillness only accentuated by the 
brazen voice of the Salvation Army band and 
the miserable music of winkles rattling on 
dinner-plates. The colours of the little girls' 
dresses slash the grey backgrounds of the 
pavement with rich streaks. Spears of sun- 
shine, darting through the sparse plane-trees, 
play all about them, and ring them with radi- 
ance ; and they look so fresh and happy that 
you want to kiss them. It is Sunday. 

Yes, it is Sunday, and you will realize that 
as the day wears on. These pleasant people 
are walking about the streets for a very definite 
reason . What is that ? It is that there is 
nothing else to do. That is the tragedy of the 
London Sunday ; there is nothing else to do. 
Why does the submerged man get drunk on 
Sunday ? There is nothing else to do . Why 



ANYWHERE 379 

does the horse -faced lady, with nice clothes, go 
to church on Sunday ? There is nothing else 
to do. Why do people overeat themselves on 
Sunday? There is nothing else to do. Why 
do parents make themselves stiff and uncom- 
fortable in new clothes, and why dio they get 
irritable and smack their children if they rouse 
them from their after-dinner sleep? Because 
there is nothing else do do. Why does the 
young clerk hang round the West End bars, 
and get into trouble with doubtful ladies ? 
Because there is nothing else to do. 

And in the evening you feel this more 
terribly. If it is summer, you may listen to 
blatant bands in our very urban parks, which 
have been thoughtfully and artistically 
" arranged " by stout gentlemen on the London 
County Council ; or you may go for a 'bus -ride 
to Richmond, Hampton Court, St. Albans, or 
Uxbridge, or Epping Forest. If you want to 
know, merely for information, to what depths 
London can sink in the way of amusing itself 
on Sundays, then I recommend the bands in the 
parks. Otherwise, there is something to be 
said for the 'bus-ride. You cannot enjoy your- 
self in London on the Lord's Day, but you 
can take London with you into some lonely 
spot and there re-create it. Jump on the 
Chingford 'bus any Sunday evening, and let 
yourself go with the crowd. Out in the glades 
of the Forest things are happening. The 
dappled shades of the woods flash with colour 
and noise, and, if you are human, you will soon 
have succumbed to the contagion of the 



380 A SUNDAY NIGHT 

carnival. Voices of all varieties, shrill, hoarse, 
and rich, rise in the heavy August air, outside 
' The Jolly Wagoners," and the jingle of 
glasses and the popping of corks compete with 
the professional hilarity of the vendors of 
novelties. Here and there bunches of confetti 
shoot up, whirling and glimmering ; elsewhere 
a group of girls execute the cake-walk or the 
can-can, their van sustaining fusillade after 
fusillade of the forbidden squirters, their rear 
echoing to " chi-ikes," cat-calls, and other 
appreciations, until an approaching motor-'bus 
scatters them in squealing confusion. By the 
bridge, the blithe, well-bitten Bacchanalians 
offer to fight one another, and then decide to 
kiss. The babble of talk and laughter be- 
comes a fury ; the radiant maidens and the 
bold boys become the eternal tragedy. Some- 
times there is a dance, and the empurpled 
girls are " taken round " by their masterful 
squires, the steps of the dance involving much 
swirling of green, violet, pink, and azure 
petticoats. 

But afar in the Forest there is Sabbath 
peace, the sound of far bells, the cry of the 
thrush, the holy pattering of leaves. The 
beeches, meeting aloft and entwining, fling the 
light and the spirit of the cathedral to the 
mossy floors. Here is purity and humanity. 
The air beats freshly on the face. Away in 
the soft blue distance is a shadowy suggestion 
of rolling country, the near fields shimmering 
under the sweet, hot sky of twilight, and the 
distant uplands telling of calm and deep peace 



ANYWHERE 381 

in other places. Truly a court of love, and 
truly loved by those who, for an hour or so, 
dwell in it. Tread lightly, you that pass. It 
may move you to mirth, but there is nothing 
mirthful here ; only the eternal sorrow and the 
eternal joy. Perchance you do not make love 
in this way ; but love is love .... Under 
every brooding oak recline the rapt couples, 
snatching their moments in this velvety green. 
Drowsy fragrance is everywhere. The quiet 
breeze disorders stray ringlets, and sometimes 
light laughter is carried sleepily to sleepy ears. 
Love, says an old Malayan chanty which I 
learned at West India Dock — Love is kind to 
the least of men. God will it so. 

But if it be winter, then the Londoner is 
badly hit on Sundays. The cafes and bars 
are miserable, deserted by their habitues and 
full only of stragglers from the lost parts, who 
have wandered here unknowingly . The waiters 
are off their form. They know their Sunday 
evening clientele and they despise it : it is 
not the real thing. The band is off its 
form. The kitchen is off its form. It is 
Sunday . 

There are no shows of any kind, unless it be 
some " private performance " of the Stage 
Society, for which tickets have to be purchased 
in the week. Certainly there are, in some of 
the West End and most of the suburban halls, 
the concerts of the National Sunday League, 
but the orchestras and the singers are really 
not of a kind to attract the musical tempera- 
ment. The orchestras play those hackneyed 



382 A SUNDAY NIGHT 

bits of Wagner and Tchaikowsky and Rossini 
of which all the world must be everlastingly 
sick, and the singers sing those tiresome songs 
which so satisfy the musical taste of Bayswater 
—baritone songs about the Army and the Navy 
and their rollicking ways, and about old 
English country life ; tenor songs about Grey 
Eyes and Roses and Waiting and Parting and 
Coming Back ; soprano songs about Calling 
and Wondering and Last Night's Dance and 
Remembering and Forgetting— foolish words, 
foolish melodies, and clumsy orchestration. But 
they seem to please the well-dressed crowd 
that comes to listen to them, so I suppose it it 
justified. I suppose it really interprets their 
attitude toward human passion. I don't know. 
. . . Anyway, it is sorry stuff. 

If you don't go to these shows, then there 
is nothing to do but walk about. I think the 
most pathetic sight to be seen in London is 
the Strand on a Sunday night. The whole 
place is shut up, almost one might say, her- 
metically sealed, except that Mooney's and 
Ward's and Romano's are open. Along 
its splendid length parade crowds and crowds 
of Jew couples and other wanderers from the 
far regions. They all look lost. They all 
look like a Cup Tie crowd from the North. 
They don't walk ; they drift. They look help- 
less ; they have an air expressive of : " Well, 
what the devil shall we do now?" I have a 
grim notion that members of the London 
County Council, observing them— if, that is, 
members of the London County Council ever 



ANYWHERE 383 

do penance by walking down the Strand on 
Sunday — take to themselves unction. "Ah!" 
they gurgle in their hearts, "ah! — beautiful. 
Nice, orderly crowd ; all walking about nice 
and orderly ; enjoying themselves in the right 
way. Ah ! Yes. We like to see the people 
enjoy themselves. We like to see it. We think 
they deserve it." 

And, in their Christian way, they pat 
themselves on the back (if not too stout) and 
go home to their cigars and liqueurs and 
whatever else they may want in the way of 
worldly indulgence. It is Sunday. 

Some years ago there was a delightful song 
that devastated New York. It was a patriotic 
song, and it was called : ' The sun is always 
shining on Broadway." At the time, I trans- 
lated this into English, for rendering at a 
private show, the refrain being that the sun 
is always shining in the Strand. So it is. Dull 
as the day may be elsewhere, there is always 
light of some kind in the Strand. It is the 
gayest, most Londonish street in London. It 
is jammed with Life, for it is the High Street of 
the world. Men of every country and clime 
have walked down the Strand. Whatever is 
to be found in other streets in other parts of 
the world is to be found in the Strand. It is 
the homeliest, mateyest street in the world. 
Let's all go down it ! 

But not— not, my dears, on Sundays. For 
a wise County Council has decreed that what- 
soever things are gay, whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever things are human and lovely— 



384 A SUNDAY NIGHT 

these things shall not be thought upon on 
Sundays. 



The English Sunday at home is in many 
cases even worse than the Sunday out. Of 
course it has considerably improved since the 
hideous 'eighties, but there are still survivals 
of the old Sabbath, not so much among the 
mass of the people as among the wealthy. 
The new kindly Sabbath has arisen with the 
new attitude of children towards parents. The 
children of the £300-a-year parents are pos- 
sessed of a natural pluck which is lacking in 
the children of the £3,ooo-a-year. They know 
what they want and they usually see that they 
get it. 

Among the kindlier folk, in the suburbs, 
Sunday is the only day when Father is really 
at home with the children, and it is made the 
most of. It is the children's day. Morning, 
afternoon, and evening are given up to them. 
In the summer there is the great treat of tea 
in the garden. In the winter, tea is taken 
in the room that is sometimes called the 
" drawing-room " by Mother and the " recep- 
tion-room " by the house-agent ; and there are 
all manner of delicate cakes and, perhaps, 
muffins, which the youngsters are allowed to 
toast themselves. 

After tea, Father romps with them, or reads 
to them from one of their own books or maga- 
zines ; or perhaps they roast chestnuts on the 
hearth, or sing or recite to the " company." 



ANYWHERE 385 

Too, they are allowed to sit up an hour or so 
later, and in this last hour every kind of pagan 
amusement is set going for their delight, so 
that they tumble at last to bed flushed with 
laughter, and longing for the six days to pass 
so that Sunday shall come again. 

That is one domestic Sunday. But there 
are others. I like to think that there are only 
about three others, but unfortunately I know 
that there are over two thousand Sundays just 
like the one which I describe below. 

Here Father and Mother are very successful, 
so successful that they live in a big house near 
Queen's Gate, and keep five servants as well 
as a motor-car. Sunday is a little different 
here from week-days, in that the children are 
allowed to spend the day outside the nursery, 
with their parents. They go to church in the 
morning with Mother and Father. They dine 
at midday with Mother and Father. In the 
afternoon they go to The Children's Service. 
They have tea in the drawing-room with 
Mother and Father. Father and Mother are 
Calvinists. 

In the evening, Father and Mother sit, one 
on either side of the hearth ; Father reading 
a weekly religious paper devoted to the creed 
of Calvin ; Mother reading another religious 
paper devoted to the creed of Calvin. 
Throughout the day the children are never 
allowed to sing or hum any tune that may be 
called profane. They are never allowed to 
hop, skip, or jump. They are told that Jesus 
will not be pleased with them if they do . They 

25 



386 A SUNDAY NIGHT 

are not allowed to read secular books or look at 
pagan pictures. In the afternoon, they are 
given Dore's Bible and an illustrated " Para- 
dise Lost " or " Pilgrim's Progress." In the 
evening, after tea (which carries with it one 
piece of seed-cake as a special treat), they 
are seated, with injunctions to silence, at the 
table, away from the fire, and set to finding 
Bible texts from one given key -word. The 
one who finds most texts gets a cake to go 
to bed with; the other gets nothing. 

So Ethel and Johnnie are at work, from six 
in the evening until nine o'clock, scratching 
through a small-type Bible for flavourless 
aphorisms. Ethel is set to find six texts, and 
finds four of them, when she perceives some- 
thing funny in one of them. She shows it to 
Johnnie, and they both giggle. Father looks 
up severely, and warns her. Then Johnnie, 
not to be outdone, remembers something he 
has heard about at school, and hunts through 
the Book of Kings to find it. He finds it. 
It is funnier still ; and he shows it to Ethel . 
She giggles again. Father looks up reprov- 
ingly at her. She tries to maintain composure 
of face, but just then Johnnie pinches her 
knee, so that she squeals with long-pent-up 
laughter . 

Father and Mother get up. Her Bible is 
taken from her. Her pencil and paper are 
taken from her. She is made to stand on the 
hearthrug, with her hands behind her, while 
Mother and Father lecture her on Blasphemy. 
The bell is then rung, and Nurse is sent for. 



ANYWHERE 387 

She is handed over to Nurse, with pitiless 
instructions. Nurse then takes her to her 
room, where she is undressed, put to bed, and 
severely slapped . 

It is Sunday. . . . Over her little bed is a 
text in letters of flame : " Thou God seest me! " 
After burning with indignation and humilia- 
tion for some time, she falls at last to sleep, 
with an unspoken prayer of thanksgiving to her 
Heavenly Father that to-morrow is Monday. 



AT RANDOM 



TWO IN A TAXI 

From Gloucester Square to Colder s Green, 
We flash through misty fields of light. 

Oh, many lovely things are seen 

From Gloucester Square to Golder's Green ! 

We reign together, king and queen, 
Over the lilied London night. 

From Gloucester Square to Golder's Green, 
We flash through misty fields of light. 

So, driver, drive your taxi well 

To Golder's Green from Gloucester Square. 
This dreaming night may cast a spell ; 
So, driver, drive your taxi well. 
I have a wondrous tale to tell : 

Immortal Love is now your fare ! 
So, driver, drive your taxi well 

To Golders Green from Gloucester Square ! 



AT RANDOM 

I ORIGINALLY planned this chapter to cover 
A German Night amid the two German colonies 
of Great Charlotte Street and Highbury ; but 
I have a notion that the public has read all 
that it wants to read about Germans in 
London. Anyway, neither spot is lovable. I 
have never been able to determine whether 
the Germans went to Highbury and the Fitzroy 
regions because they found their atmosphere 
ready-made, or whether the districts have 
acquired their atmosphere from the German 
settlers. Certainly they have everything that 
is most Germanically oppressive : mist, large 
women, lager and leberwurst, and a moral 
atmosphere of the week before last that con- 
veys to the mind the physical sensations of 
undigested cold sausage. So I was leaving 
Great Charlotte Street, and its Kaiser, its 
kolossal and its kultur, to hop on the first 
motor-'bus that passed, and let it take me where 
it would — a favourite trick of mine — when I 
ran into Georgie. 

I have mentioned Georgie before. Georgie 
is one of London's echoes ; one of those sturdy 
Bohemians who stopped living when Sala died. 
If you frequent the Strand or Fleet Street or 



392 AT RANDOM 

Oxford Street you probably know him by sight. 
He is short. He wears a frock-coat, buttoned 
at the waist and soup-splashed at the lapels. 
His boots are battered, his trousers threadbare. 
He carries jaunty eye-glasses, a jaunty silk hat, 
and shaves once a week. He walks with both 
hands in trousers pockets and feet out-splayed. 
The poor laddie is sadly outmoded, but he 
doesn't know it. He still lunches on a glass 
of stout and biscuit-and-cheese at " The Bun 
Shop" in the Strand. He still drinks whisky 
at ten o'clock in the morning. He still 
clings to the drama of the 'sixties, and he still 
addresses every one as Laddie or My Dear. 

He hailed me in Oxford Street, and cried : 
" Where now, laddie, where now ? " 

" I don't know," I said, " anywhere." 

" Then I'll come with you." 

So we wandered. It was half-past seven. 
The night was purple, and through a gracious 
mist the lights glittered with subdued brilli- 
ance. London was in song. Cabs and 'buses 
and the evening crowd made its music. I 
heard it calling me. So did Georgie. With 
tacit sympathy we linked arms and strolled 
westwards, and dropped in at one of the big 
bars, and talked. 

We talked of the old days — before I was 
born. Georgie told me of the crowd that 
decorated the place in the 'nineties : that com- 
pany of feverish, foolish verbal confectioners 
who set themselves Byronically to ruin their 
healths and to write self-pitiful songs about 
the ruins. Half a dozen elegant Sadies and 



AT RANDOM 393 

Mamies were at the American end of the bar, 
with their escorts, drinking Horse's Necks, 
Maiden's Prayers, Mother's Milks, Manhat- 
tans, and Scotch Highballs. Elsewhere the 
Cockney revellers were drinking their eternal 
whisky -and -sodas or beers, and their saluta- 
tions led Georgie to a disquisition on the 
changing toasts of the last twenty years. To- 
day, it is something short and sharp : either 
" Hooray ! " or " Here's fun ! " or " Cheero ! " 
or a non-committal " Wow-wow ! " Ten years 
back, it was : " Well, laddie, here's doing it 
again ! " or " Good health, old boy, and may 
we get all we ask for ! " And ten years before 
that, it was something even more grandilo- 
quent . 

From drink we drifted to talking about food ; 
and I have already told you how wide is 
George's knowledge of the business of feeding 
in London. We both hate the dreary, many- 
dished dinners of the hotels, and we both love 
the cosy little chop-houses, of which a few 
only now remain : one or two in Fleet Street, 
and perhaps half a dozen in the little alleys 
off Cornhill and Lombard Street. I agree, too, 
with Georgie in deploring the passing of the 
public -house mid-day ordinary. From his 
recollections, I learn that the 'sixties and 
'seventies were the halcyon days for feeding ; 
indeed, the only time when Londoners really 
lived ; and an elderly uncle of mine, who, at 
that time, went everywhere and knew every- 
body in the true hard-up Bohemia, tells me 
that there were then twenty or thirty taverns 



394 AT RANDOM 

within fifty yards of Ludgate Circus, where the 
shilling ordinary was a feast for an Emperor, 
and whose interiors answered to that enthu- 
siastic description of Disraeli's in Coningsby 
— perhaps the finest eulogy of the English inn 
ever written. 

Unhappily, they are gone to make way for 
garish, reeking hotels and restaurants for which 
one has to dress. Those that remain are mere 
drinking-places ; you can, if you wish, get a 
dusty sandwich, but the barmaid regards you 
as an idiot if you ask for one. But there are 
exceptions. There is, for instance, " King and 
Keys," in Fleet Street, where you may lunch 
well for sixpence, if that is all you can afford, 
by ordering a Guinness and one of their 
wonderful ham-and-cress sandwiches. " King 
and Keys " maintains the old traditions of good 
drink and counters laden with toothsome napery 
and things to eat, and its mellow, old-time 
atmosphere is one of the rare joys of that 
wretched highway. The saloon is gay with a 
glittering and artfully artless arrangement of 
many-coloured liqueur bottles, lit at intervals 
with ferns and fresh flowers of the season, and 
the counter is loaded with hams and beeves 
and cheeses, lordly celeries, soused herrings, 
tongues, sausages, tomatoes, eggs, onions, 
pork-pies, and all those common things that 
make so glad the heart of man. 

" The Cock," immortalized by Tennyson, is 
also one of the few survivals of the simple, 
and its waiters are among the best in London. 
As a rule, the English waiter is bad and the 



AT RANDOM 395 

foreign waiter is good. But when you get a 
good English waiter you get the very best 
waiter in the world. There is Albert — no end 
of a good fellow. He shares with all English 
waiters a fine disregard for form ; yet he has 
that indefinable majesty which no Continental 
has ever yet assimilated ; and he has, too, a 
nice sense of the needs of those who work in 
Fleet Street. You can go to Albert (that isn't 
his true name) and say — 

" Albert, I haven't much money to-day. 
What's good and what do I get most of for 
tenpence?" Or " Albert — I've had a cheque 
to-day. What's best — and damn the expense? " 
And Albert advises you in each emergency, 
and whether you tip him twopence or a shilling 
you receive the same polite " Much obliged, 
sir ! " 

Georgie and I began to remember feeds 
we had had in London — real feeds, I mean ; 
not " dinners," but the kind of food you yearn 
for when you are hungry, and have, perhaps, 
only eleven pennies in your pocket. At these 
times you are not interested in Rumpelmayer's 
for tea, or Romano's for lunch, or the Savoy 
for dinner. Nix. It's Lockhart's, The ABC, 
cook-shops, coffee-stalls, cab-shelters, and 
the hundred other what-not feeding-bins of 
London. I talked of the Welsh rarebits at 
" The Old Bell," the theatrical house in Well- 
ington Street, and of the Friday night tripe - 
and-onion suppers at " The Plough," Clapham. 
Georgie thought that his fourpenny feed in 
the cab-shelter at Duncannon Street was an 



396 AT RANDOM 

easy first, until I asked him if he knew the 
eating-houses of the South London Road, and 
his hard face cracked to a smile. I was telling 
him how, when I first had a definite commis- 
sion from a tremendous editor, I had touched 
a friend for two shillings, and, walking home, 
had stopped in the London Road and had 
ordered dishes which were billed on the menu 
as ; Pudding, boiled and cauli. FOLLOW 
Golden Roll; and this, capped by a pint of 
hot tea, for sevenpence, when he burst into my 
words with : — 

" The South London Road, laddie? You ask 
me if / know the South London Road ? Come 
again, boy, come again; I don't get you." 
He lay back in his chair, and recited, with 
a half -smile : " The — South— London— Road ! 
God, what sights for the hungry ! Let's see 
— how do they go ? Good Pull Up For Carmen 
on the right. Far Famed Eel Pie and Tripe 
House opposite. Palace Restaurant, Noted 
For Sausages, next. Then The Poor Man's 
Friend. Then Bingo's Fish Bar. Coffee Cara- 
vanserai farther up. And — Lord ! — S. P. and 
O. everywhere for threepence -half penny. 
What a sight, boy ! Ever walked down it at 
the end of a day without a meal and without a 
penny? I should say so. And nearly flung 
bricks through the windows — what ? Sausages 
swimming in bubbling gravy. Or tucked in, 
all snug and comfy, with a blanket of 
mashed. Tomatoes frying themselves, and 
whining for the fun of it. Onions singing. 
Saveloys entrenched in pease-pudding. Jellied 



AT RANDOM 397 

eels and stewed tripe and eel -pies at twopence, 
threepence, and sixpence. Irish stew at seven- 
pence on the Come -Again style — as many 
follows as you want for the same money. Do 
I know the South London Road? Does a 
duck know the water?" 

We talked of other streets in London which 
are filled with shop -windows glamorous of 
prospect for the gourmet ; and not only for the 
gourmet, but for all simple-minded folk. 
Georgie talked of the toy-shops of Holborn. 
He made gestures expressive of paradisaical 
delight. He is one of the few people I know 
who can sympathize with my own childish- 
ness. He never snubs my enthusiasms or my 
discoveries. Other friends sit heavily upon 
me when I display emotion over things like 
shops, taxi-cabs, dinners, drinks, railway 
journeys, music-halls, and cry, " Tommy — for 
the Lord's sake, shut up\" But Georgie 
understands. He understands why I cackle 
with delight when the new Stores Catalogue 
arrives. (By the way, if ever I made a list 
of the Hundred Best Books, number one would 
be an Illustrated Stores Catalogue. What a 
wonderful bedside book it is ! There is surely 
nothing so provocative to the sluggish imagina- 
tion. Open it where you will, it fires an un- 
ending train of dreams . It is so full of 
thousands of things which you simply must 
have and for which you have no use at all, that 
you finally put it down and write a philosophic 
essay on The Vanity of Human Wishes, and 
thereby earn three guineas . Personally, I have 



398 AT RANDOM 

found over a dozen short-story plots in the 
pages of the Civil Service Stores List.) 

When we tired of talking, Georgie inquired 
what we should do now. I put it : suppose 
we took a stroll along Bankside to London 
Bridge, and turned off to Bermondsey to take 
a taste of the dolours of the Irish colony, and 
then follow the river to Cherry Gardens and 
cross to Wapping by the Rotherhithe Tunnel ; 
but he said No, and gave as his reason that the 
little girls of the Irish and foreign quarters 
were too distractingly lovely for him, as he is 
one of those unfortunates who want every 
pretty thing they see and are miserable for a 
week if they can't get it. His idea was to run 
over to Homerton. Did I know old Jumbo? 
Fat old Jumbo. Jumbo, who kept Jumbo's, 
under the arches, where you got cut from the 
joint, two veg., buggy-bolster, and cheese-roll. 
I did. So to Jumbo's we went by the Stoke 
Newington 'bus, whose conductor shouted im- 
peratively thoughout the journey : " Aw fez 
pliz ! " though we were the only passengers ; 
and on the way I made a little, soft song, 
the burden of which was : "I do love my 
table d'hote, but O you Good Pull Up For 
Carmen ! " 

Jumbo received us with that slow good- 
humour which has made his business what it 
is. He and his assistant, Dusty, a youngster 
of sixty-two who cuts about like a newsboy, 
have worked together for so many years that 
Dusty frequently tells his chief not to be such a 
Censored fool. Jumbo's joints are good, and 



AT RANDOM 399 

so are his steak-toad, sprouts, and baked, but 
his steak-and-kidney puddings at fourpence are 
better. I had one of these, garnished with 
"boiled and tops." Georgie had "leg, well 
done, chips, and batter." I never knew a man 
who could do the commonplace with so much 
natural dignity. He gave his order with the 
air of a viveur planning a ten -course arrange- 
ment at Claridge's. He shouted for a half -of - 
bitter with the solemnity of one who commands 
that two bottles of dry Monopole be put on 
the ice. He is, too, the only man I know who 
salutes his food. I have been at dinners in 
Wesleyan quarters like St. John's Wood where 
heads of families have mumbled what they call 
Grace or " asking a blessing " ; but I have 
seen nothing so simply beautiful as Georgie's 
obeisance to his filled plate. He bows to Irish 
stew as others dip to the altar. 

While Dusty stalked a clean fork through a 
forest of dirty ones, Georgie fired at him ques- 
tions in which I had no part. Did Dusty 
remember the show at Willie's about — how 
many was it ? — twenty years ago ? What a 
NIGHT ! Did he remember how Phil May had 
squirted the syphon down poor old Pitcher's 
neck ? And Clarence . . . Clarence was fairly 
all out that night— what? And next morning— 
when they met Jimmy coming down the steps 
of the Garrick Club— what? " 

To all of which Dusty replied : " Ah, yes, 
sir. I should say so. That's the idea, sir. 
Those was the days ! " Then the dinner came 
along, and we started on it. I prefer to be 



400 AT RANDOM 

attended by Jumbo. Dusty's service of steak 
pudding is rather in the nature of a spar. 
Jumbo, on the other hand, places your plate 
before you with the air of one doing something 
sacramental . 

While we ate, we looked out on the sad 
lights of Homerton, and the shadowy arches 
and cringing houses. A queer place, whose 
flavour I have never rightly been able to 
catch . It is nondescript, but full of suggestion . 
Some day, probably, its message will burst 
upon me, and I expect it will be something 
quite obvious. The shadow of history hangs 
over it all. Six hundred years ago, in the 
velvet dusk of a summer night, Sir John 
Froissart galloped this way, by plaguey bad 
roads, and he beguiled the tedium of his 
journey by making an excellent new pastour- 
elle. But you will hear no echo of this 
delicious song to-day : that lies buried for ever 
in the yellow mists of the MS. Room at the 
British Museum. Motor-'buses will snatch 
you from St. James's Palace, dash you through 
the City, and land you, within twenty minutes, 
breathless and bewildered, in the very spot 
where Sir John climbed from his steed. There 
is little now that is naughty and light-hearted. 
There is much that is sombrely wicked, and 
there are numbers of unsweetened ladies 
attached to the churches ; and if it should 
chance to be one of your bad days, you may 
hear, as you stand musing upon the fringe of 
the Downs, in place of Sir John's insouciant 
numbers, " Mein liebe Schwann . . ." and 



AT RANDOM 401 

other trifles rendered by gramophone at an 
opposite villa. But if ever it had any charms, 
they are gone. We may read in our histories 
that about these parts kings and princes, 
soldiers and wits, counselled, carolled, and 
caroused ; but you would never think it . Too 
soon, I fancy, the music and the wine were 
done, the last word said, and the guests sent 
their several ways into the night. For nothing 
remains — nothing of that atmosphere which 
grows around every spot where people have 
loved, and suffered, and hated, and died ; only 
Jumbo and a nameless spirit remain. 

It is one of the few places in town where 
the street -merchant survives in all his glory. 
Everywhere in London, of course, we have the 
coffee stall, the cockle, whelk, and escallop 
stall, the oyster bar (8d. per doz.), the baked 
potato and chestnut man, and (an innovation of 
191 4) the man in the white dress with a port- 
able tin, selling pommes f rites in grease-proof 
bags at a penny a time. But in Homerton, in 
addition to these, you have the man with the 
white-metal stand, selling a saveloy and a dab 
of pease-pudding for a penny, or boiled pigs' 
trotters, or many kinds of heavy, hot cakes. 

After our orgy, we bought a sweet cake, 
and Georgie took me to what looked like a 
dirty little beerhouse that hid itself under one 
of the passages that lead to the perilous 
Marshes of Hackney. We slipped into a little 
bar with room for about four persons, and 
Georgie swung to the counter, peremptorily 
smashed a glass on it, and demanded : 

26 



402 AT RANDOM 

" Crumdy munt— two ! " I was expecting a 
new drink, but the barman seemed to under- 
stand, for he brought us two tiny glasses of 
green liqueur, looked at Georgie, casually, then 
again, sharply, and said, in mild surprise :— 

" God . . . it's old Georgie ! " and then 
went to attend the four-ale bar. When he 
came back we exchanged courtesies, and 
bought, for ourselves and for him, some of the 
sixpenny cigars of the house. We lingered 
over our drink in silence, and, for a time, 
nothing could be heard except the crackling 
of the saltpetre in the Sunday- Afternoon Splen- 
didos. Then Georgie inquired what was doing 
at my end, and told me of what he was writing 
and of how he was amusing himself, and I 
told him equally interesting things. I told 
him, to his delight, of a dull dinner I had had 
with some casual acquaintances who, through 
no fault of their own, belonged to The Best 
People of Pimlico, and were therefore prac- 
tically prisoners, cut away from four-fifths of 
the civilized world. They could only do certain 
things, and only do them in a certain way. 
There were only about six restaurants where 
they could be seen dining. There were only 
a few theatres where they could be seen— and 
only in certain parts of those theatres. There 
were only a few outdoor places to which they 
might go, and then only in a certain way. 
There were only a few people whom they might 
know. And never, never on any occasion 
might they betray the fact that they were 
enjoying themselves, on the rare occasions 



AT RANDOM 403 

when they were doing so. Of course, there is 
nothing tiresome in all this, if you like it. 
The tragedy lay in the fact that these par- 
ticular people didn't ; but, owing to the severe 
training which they had received from their 
patrician people, all courage, all spirit of revolt, 
everything of the glorious and the vulgar, had 
been sucked out of them. They were 
spunkless . 

The dinner was long. It was the dull table 
d'hote dinner of one of the enormous hotels 
near Piccadilly Circus. The room— the Louis- 
Something Salon— was spitefully hot. The 
company was exclusive, beautifully robed in 
a quietly fashionable way. The band played 
sweaty German dances and the more obvious 
classics. The waiters took not the slightest 
interest in their patrons . The conversation was 
like the music — sticky and obvious. It trans- 
gressed no laws. It was based not so much 
on consideration for others as on the wicked 
law of self-suppression, the most poisonous 
article in the gospel of the upper middle - 
classes. Reticence has always been the enemy 
of Art, Progress, and Happiness, and it led 
this company to talk futilities . . . and 
futilities. I wondered when they would stop. 
As a matter of fact, they never did stop ; they 
never do stop. Go there to-night, and you 
will find them still at it. 

The wine sparkled, the diamonds sparkled, 
and the dresses sparkled. But never did a 
face sparkle. Never did the talk sparkle. They 
talked the Obvious, and then they talked th§ 



404 AT RANDOM 

Obvious. They tossed the well-bred Obvious 
to one another. 

The voices of the girls were thin and 
metallic. They were without tenderness. 
Their white silks surged up their soft bodies 
and broke in a foam of lace upon their 
alabaster shoulders. Every fair impulse of life 
seemed to have been corroded. They had 
white limbs, but without the imperious urge 
of youth and blood. They looked as though 
they ate too much and loved too little. About 
the elder women was an air of acid malice. 
The colours of their dresses burnt into the 
sombre walls. They reminded one of the 
peacock women painted by Augustus John. 
Their fingers were strung with barbaric rings ; 
their nails were pointed and polished with 
vermilion . Their lips were coloured ; their 
hands were waxy. They smoked cigarettes 
defiantly. There was something of challenge 
in their glances at other women. 

At a certain table a young girl was dining 
with a middle-aged Jew. Her powdered neck 
was lit with soft pearls . Her escort blazed with 
gold and stones. He spat his food, and be- 
came messy at the mouth by the syrupy com- 
pliments he was too evidently paying her while 
eating asparagus. Most of the time she was 
looking away from him, and, when he drank, 
her nose was sharply twitched ; when he put 
his glass down she was again impassive. He 
continued to talk and splutter, while she looked 
from the high, bold windows on Piccadilly. 
She was thinking of something, seeing some- 



AT RANDOM 405 

thing, I fancy : something past, perhaps, some 
opportunity of happiness that had come her 
way ; something caught and loosed again, 
never to be recaptured. Her eyes widened, 
and she half-smiled, and the Jew thought she 
was thinking of him, and recalled her with 
a loud word. She came back suddenly, 
dropped her poor dream, and seemed to realize 
what she had got— a fat, stupid, rich, rather 
kind-hearted Jew. 

At our table we recited the Obvious. Good- 
breeding was our unseen guest. I loathe 
Good-breeding. As Mamie would say : These 
well-bred people make me go bug -house. I 
am so ill-bred myself that there is always con- 
flict in the atmosphere when we meet. Often 
I wish I were well-bred ; which ambition only 
demonstrates how ill-bred I am. They were 
still well-bred when I and another of the party 
left them. I was due for an orchestra, and 
the other fellow murmured of an assignation 
at Charing Cross. But once out in Piccadilly, 
though we were strangers, we moved together 
and had a coffee and liqueur at " The Monico," 
before I joined my band, because the other 
fellow thought it would be rather a lark. I 
feared he would be late for his assignation, but 
he conveyed, in a well-bred way, that there 
wasn't one, and asked if people really did these 
things . 



It was half-past eight before Georgie and 
I were tired of Homerton ; and he then de- 



406 AT RANDOM 

manded what we should do now. I said : 
Return ; and it was carried. We went west- 
wards, and called at Rule's for a chat with 
Charles, and then dropped in at The Alhambra, 
just in time to catch Phyllis Monkman at her 
Peruvian Pom -Pom dance in a costume that 
is surely one of the inspirations of modern 
ballet. We remained only long enough to pay 
homage to the young danseuse, and then 
drifted to those parts of the Square where, 
from evening until midnight, the beasts of 
pleasure pace their cells. I have often re- 
marked to various people on the dearth of 
decent music in our lounges and cafes . I once 
discussed the matter with the chef dtorchestre 
of the Cafe de l'Europe, but he confessed his 
inability to reform matters. Why can't we 
have one place in London where one can get 
drinks, or coffee if desired, and listen to really 
good music ? There is a mass of the best 
work that is suitable for quartet or quintet, 
or has been adapted for small orchestra ; why 
is it never heard? Mr. Jacobs says that Lon- 
doners don't want it. I don't believe him. 
" If I play," he says, " anything of Mozart or 
Bach or Handel or Ravel or Chopin, they are 
impatient. They talk — ever so loud. And 
when it is finished, they rush up and say : Play 
' Hitchy Koo.' Play ' The Girl in the Taxi.' ' 
But I believe there is really a big public for a 
fully licensed cafe with a good band which 
shall have a definite programme of the best 
music every evening, and stick to that pro- 
gramme regardless of " special requests." 



AT RANDOM 407 

At the cafe where Georgie and I were 
lounging, the band was kept hard at work by 
these Requests. They were: "La Boheme " 
selection, " That Midnight Choo-choo," " Tip- 
perary," " Tales of Hoffmann " Barcarolle, 
" All Aboard for Dixie," " In my Harem," and 
' The Ragtime Navvy." At the first bars of 
the Navvy we drifted out, and fell into the arms 
of The Tattoo Artist, who was taking an 
evening off. 

The tattoo artist is a person of some conse- 
quence. He has a knowledge of London that 
makes most Londoners sick, and his acquaint- 
ance with queer and casual characters is illimit- 
able. He was swollen with good food and 
drink, and as he extended a strong right arm 
to greet us, he positively shed a lustre of 
success and power. The state of business in all 
trades and professions may be heartbreakingly 
bad, but there is one profession in which there 
are no bad seasons— one that will survive and 
flourish until the world ceases to play the 
quaint comedy of love. All the world loves 
a lover, and none more so than the tattoo artist, 
or, to give him his professional name, Pro- 
fessor Sylvanus Ruffino, the world's champion, 
whose studio is in Commercial Road. When 
a young man of that district has been bitten 
by the serpent of love, what does he do? He 
goes to Sylvanus, and has the name of the 
lady, garnished with a heart or a floral cupid, 
engraved on his hands, arms, or chest. His 
" studio " is a tiny shop, with a gaudy chintz 
curtain for door, the window decorated with 



408 AT RANDOM 

prints of the tattooed bodies of his clients. 
Elsewhere about the exterior are coloured 
designs of Chinese dragons, floral emblems, 
cupids, anchors, flags, and other devices with 
which your skin may be beautified at trifling 
cost ; anything from sixpence to five shillings . 

The professor works every evening, from 
seven to ten o'clock, in his shirt-sleeves. In 
the corner of the studio is the operating -table, 
littered with small basins of liquid inks of 
various hues, and a sterilizing-vessel, which 
receives the electric needle after each client 
has been punctured. Winter, he tells me, 
contradicting the poet, is his best time. He 
finds that in Shadwell and the neighbour- 
hood the young man's fancy turns more 
definitely to love in the dark evenings than in 
the Spring. As soon as October sets in his 
studio is crowded with boys who desire the 
imprinting of beautiful names on their thick 
skins. He calculates that he must have 
tattooed the legend " Mizpah " some eight 
thousand times since he started in the business. 
Girls, too, sometimes visit him, and demon- 
strate their love for their boy in a chosen 
masculine way. 

To-night he had snatched a few hours in the 
West, and was just returning home. It being 
then well past twelve, we sauntered a little 
way with him, and called at a coffee -stall for 
a cup of the leathery tea which is the speciality 
of the London coffee-stall. Most stalls have 
their " regulars," especially those that are so 
fortunate as to pitch near a Works of any 



AT RANDOM 409 

kind. The stall we visited was on the outskirts 
of Soho, and near a large colour-printing 
house which was then working day and night. 
I wonder, by the way, why printers always 
drink tea and stout in preference to other 
beverages. I wonder, too, why policemen 
prefer hard-boiled eggs above all other food. 

It is a curious crowd that gathers about the 
stalls. In the course of a night you may meet 
there every type of Londoner. You may meet 
policemen, chauffeurs, printers, toughs, the boy 
and girl who have been to a gallery and want 
to finish the night in proper style, and— the 
cadgers. At about the middle of the night 
there is a curious break in the company : the 
tone changes. Up to four o'clock, it's the 
stay -up -all -nights ; after that hour it's the get- 
up -early s. One minute there will be a 
would-be viveur, in sleek dress clothes ; then 
along comes a cadger ; then along comes a 
warrior from the battlefield. Then, with 
drowsy clatter, up comes a gang of roadmen, 
scavengers, railway workers, and so on. A 
little later comes the cheerful one who has 
made a night of it, and, somehow, managed to 
elude the police. He takes a cup of strong 
tea, demonstrates the graceful dancing of Mr. 
Malcolm Scott, and smashes two cups in doing 
it. Then up comes the sport, with a cert, for 
the big race to-day. Then up comes six 
o'clock, and the keeper packs up, and shoves 
his stall to its yard. 

After a long exchange of reminiscences, we 
parted with the tattoo artist, and I walked 



4io AT RANDOM 

home with Georgie, the outmoded, who lives 
in Vauxhall Bridge Road. I have often told 
him that the stiff, crinoline atmosphere of the 
place is the right touch for him, but he does 
not understand. It is a poor faded thing, this 
district ; not glamorously old ; just ridicu- 
lously out of fashion. Shops and houses are 
all echoes of the terrible 'seventies, and you 
seem to hear the painful wheezing of a barrel- 
organ, to catch a glimpse of side -whiskers and 
bustles, and to be encompassed by all the little 
shamefaced emotions of that period which died 
so long ago and only haunt us now in this street 
and in the provinces. 

There, on the steps of one of the silly little 
houses, I parted from Georgie and this book. 



UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, IHE GRE5HAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON 



